Cromwell

Lindsey is back in the Oval Office after his victory in the primary.

T: Linseed! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you out campaigning?

G: Haven’t you heard? I escaped the runoff. With your help, of course. I couldn’t have done it without you.

T: Of course. I’m a winner. Everything I touch always turns out OK.

G: Which brings us to the war. You aren’t thinking about making an Obama deal, are you? That would make the war a disaster. It wouldn’t have accomplished anything.

T: Of course not! Obama made a terrible deal. Mine will be much, much better. Obama didn’t know how to negotiate. I do.

G: You understand leverage better than anyone.

T: Absolutely. That’s the key. The damage I can do with tariffs and the military is my leverage. No one else has that.

G: But the Iranians don’t seem to understand that. They aren’t giving up. In fact, lots of people are arguing they’re winning.

T: It’s just because the price of oil has spiked. That will end soon. Trust me. Didn’t I say everything I touch turns out right?

G: But there is speculation that world reserves are running low, and the price of oil is about to skyrocket again. What if the Iranians try to wait you out? Can you really ignore what that will mean to American voters? Won’t that force you into an Obama deal?

T: The voters love me. They know how great I am. They’re willing to live through a little turbulence. Anything to the contrary is fake news.

G: But the polls say otherwise, and Republican candidates are starting to get nervous.

T: The polls are fake news, and I control my party. Just ask Ken Paxton.

G: You may need to start bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran to gain more leverage if the Iranians don’t capitulate soon.

T: I hope I don’t have to do that, but if I do, I do. Putin would understand. The strong do what they have to do, and everyone else has to live with it. That’s the way the world works.

G: So I hear. I hope you’re right about the polls. Things are going to get really ugly around here if you’re wrong. You could even get impeached again.

T: I’m always right. You should know that better than anyone. (Graham leaves)

One of the few issues that unites the American right and left is contempt for the current Iranian regime. Boomers hate it because of the events of 1979; right-wing Christians despise all Muslims; and liberal democrats have issues with a repressive, reactionary, autocratic state. Everyone here would like to see it go.

The divisions in this country are purely pragmatic. The left, and the genuinely “America First” faction of MAGA, think the costs of regime change outweigh the benefits. Trump, Bibi, and Lindsey obviously don’t agree, but they have been unwilling to match the objective with the means necessary to accomplish it–namely, a massive ground invasion. As a result, the regime will conclude the war stronger, not weaker.

There are a wide range of reasons why Americans either support or oppose Israel. These include:

Pro-Israel

1. ISRAEL IS A PLUCKY LITTLE DEMOCRACY, BORN OUT OF THE HOLOCAUST, SURROUNDED BY HOSTILE AND AUTOCRATIC ARAB REGIMES: This somewhat anachronistic view of Israel is still shared by many elderly Democrats, including Joe Biden.
2. THE CREATION OF A STRONG AND EXPANDING ISRAEL IS A CONDITION OF THE SECOND COMING: Many right-wing evangelical American Protestants believe this and consequently support Israel even against the claims of Palestinian Christians.
3. ONE NATION, ONE CREED: Some American nationalists support the current Israeli regime for this reason even if, logically, it would mean expelling Jews from the United States.
4. BIBI KICKS BUTT: The image of Netanyahu as a human steamroller appeals to portions of the New Right who celebrate testosterone and the destruction of the “feminized” world order.

Anti-Israel

1. TODAY’S ISRAEL IS AN AGGRESSIVE IMPERIALIST STATE THAT SEEKS HEGEMONY OVER ITS NEIGHBORS AND HAS THE RESOURCES TO DO SO: This is effectively the opposite of the “plucky little democracy” theme discussed above.
2. BIBI AND TRUMP ARE UNITED IN THEIR DESIRE TO PUT A KNEE ON THE NECKS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE: In this image, the Israelis are the Middle East version of Minnesota policemen; they are settlers oppressing ethnic minorities.
3. THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON TO CREATE AN ISRAELI EXCEPTION TO “AMERICA FIRST”: This is Tucker Carlson’s position; he sees our relations with Israel as a strategic liability.
4. WE JUST HATE JEWS, PERIOD: Both the extreme right and the left include pure antisemites, although they are probably more numerous among the right.

Gaza effectively discredited the “plucky little democracy” position and increased the number of people in the first and third anti-Israel camps. It didn’t much impact the other arguments.

Opinion is split in the Democratic Party as to the best way to attack Trump and the GOP. Some candidates want to emphasize the danger he presents to liberal democracy, while others believe saving democracy is a cause that is too remote and abstract for the average voter; they want to talk primarily about the cost of gas. Who is right here?

It’s an unnecessary choice, because autocrats rarely receive, let alone accept, good advice, which leads to bad policy decisions. The Iran and Ukraine wars are two excellent examples of this phenomenon. An attack on outcomes consequently leads to an attack on the system itself.

Imagine that you are a left-leaning resident of a city in a red state. Over the last few years, your state legislature has done everything in its power to limit your ability to influence policy, even in your own municipality. The boundaries of the state legislative districts were gerrymandered in favor of conservative Republicans from rural areas years ago. In response to Trump’s demands and the recent Supreme Court decisions, US House district boundaries in your state have now been gerrymandered, so your representative is a Republican. You still have the ability to elect sympathetic city leaders, but even there, the legislature has preempted the City Council’s ability to enact legislation on a long list of important topics. The system is now rigged against you. What do you do about it?

You have three choices. You can learn to tolerate life as a subject, rather than a citizen; you can beat your head against the wall and work fruitlessly to overcome the obstacles the system has created for you; or you can move.

Most people will take the first option. Is it any wonder that so many Americans are depressed about the future?

For those of you who have never been here, the Mast Store is the NC mountains version of a Vermont general store. It sells a wide range of goods in an atmosphere reminiscent of the 1940s or 1950s. It is intended to appeal to customers who long for what they view as simpler and better times. It is a wild success, and therefore, a tourist attraction.

The latest ads for the Mast Store boast that it has no self-checkout lines. That is the perfect advertising slogan for our times. Why? Because, in the age of AI, service from an actual human being will become the ultimate luxury good. The rest of us will have to settle for a world populated by unfeeling and inflexible machines and bots.

You don’t have to be a reactionary to recoil from that sort of consumer experience.

The Economist is optimistic about AI, as you would expect. It will create vast numbers of high paying jobs in fields that don’t even exist today, because technological improvements always do. Sure, there are potential pitfalls, but they will be handled smoothly and appropriately through the political system. Don’t worry; be happy.

The public is not so sure. In particular, it has doubts that a sclerotic political system that failed to compensate the unlucky losers of globalization and tech changes over the last few decades will do any better this time around. From booing graduation speakers to supporting data center moratoria, it is fighting back as best it can.

Until now, the tech titans have tried to manage the backlash by making vague promises and large campaign contributions to friendly politicians. They have also portrayed themselves as front line soldiers in a new cold war with China, and, of course, they have sucked up to Trump, bigly. Since these tactics have met with limited success, expect two new gambits: first, IPOs, in addition to adding to their already fabulous wealth, will create a larger class of capitalists with a strong vested interest in deregulating AI; second, the tech titans and Trump will promise small payments to the public in an effort to fend off efforts at nationalization. Will it work? The future is unwritten.

It’s 2029. A left populist Democrat was just elected president in spite of Elon Musk’s best efforts. He is promising to take action to get the right-wing techno-aristocracy, and Musk in particular, under control. Musk, as you can imagine, is not pleased.

In retaliation, Musk unleashes a much more powerful version of Grok on the nation’s computer system. In short order, the internet is paralyzed. Business and government cannot function. Musk demands that the proposed reforms be shelved; otherwise, Grok will continue to wreak havoc on the entire country.

In desperation, the president turns to Sam Altman and begs him to save America from Grok. Altman agrees, for a suitable price, and sets his latest AI model against Grok. The two mighty models collide in cyberspace as the nation watches breathlessly. Who will win the battle of the predators?

Not us, you can be sure.

The problem with America today, according to the New Right, is that it doesn’t give pride of place to testosterone. The country is too divided and too feminine. It is afraid to take risks and to dominate. If men were permitted to be real men again, we would see a burst of energy that would get rid of the old dead wood and bring in a golden age.

The Nazis and the Italian fascists believed these things, too. My question is, how did they manage to lose the war to two overly feminized liberal democracies?

Yes, I know the USSR played a big role, too, but it had nothing to do with the fall of Mussolini, and it didn’t have to fight a second war in the Pacific.

Jefferson famously removed large portions of the text from his copy of the Bible. I am reasonably sure that he kept the parts about Christian ethics and eliminated the parts about metaphysics. What about J.D. Vance?

He is the other side of the same coin. He kept the parts about metaphysics and removed the language about compassion and helping the poor. He worships rules and power, just like his boss.

Crime is falling. With the exception of a blip during the first years of the pandemic, it has been falling for decades, due mostly to the demographic changes the New Right otherwise fears so much. It started to fall again in Biden’s later years, and the decline has continued under Trump. What should the GOP say about this?

Trump could try and take credit for the decline, of course. But you would never know that crime was falling by watching the TV news, and to crow about his success would take the sting out of one of Trump’s favorite arguments–that real Americans are still in mortal danger from the rest of us, including illegal immigrants. As a result, I think it is highly unlikely he will emphasize his apparent success; he will continue to pound the left’s supposed failures and try to scare us into voting for Republicans.

If you’re an AI optimist, you believe one of two things: either you think, based on the American experience from the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, that millions of high-paying jobs in completely new fields will spring up to accommodate the unemployed; or you have faith that the now unimaginably wealthy class of capitalists will share their riches with the rest of us, either as a result of their natural benevolence or successful political action.

If you’re an AI pessimist, you believe neither thing. Based on our experience since 1980, you think the capitalist class has no interest in sharing its wealth, and the government is too hamstrung by gerrymandering, the filibuster, and the judicial system to force them to do so. Right-wing politicians will continue to use social issues to persuade red state voters to ignore their economic self-interest. In addition, AI is different than the inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries in that it makes both the brains and the bodies of workers replaceable, leaving nothing but feelings and animal passions, which have limited market value. By the time American workers figure out they are now living in a supercharged version of the dollar store economy–one that resembles feudalism more than the society of 1950–it will be too late to fix the problem.

I was born in the 1950s, not the 1850s, so, as you can imagine, I fall into the pessimist camp.

STAGE ONE: The AI model is imperfect and still requires an editor. Businesses stop hiring new entry level employees but shift the responsibilities of existing employees from creation to editing. They become slightly more efficient and profitable. Overall employment is stagnant, but the markets rejoice.

STAGE TWO: The models improve to the point where editing is no longer required. Millions of workers are fired. Profits soar, and so does inequality. The political backlash begins in earnest, but the capitalists flood the system with money, and Supreme Court decisions make dramatic reforms impossible. There is no significant expansion of the welfare state to alleviate the misery caused by unemployment; some of the displaced workers find jobs in newly emerging fields, but most don’t.

STAGE THREE: The models become autonomous. They even create and run businesses themselves, subject only to the will of their nominal owners. They are given personhood status by the legal system. Does liberal democracy have any meaning when the economy looks like this? TBD.

The dream of using tariffs to create the economic preconditions for the Godly Society is dead. Having (correctly) determined that the Chinese hold too many cards to be bullied, Trump has called off the trade war against them and is treating them more like a valued partner. So where do the proponents of the Godly Society go from here?

I suspect AI will be their deus ex machina. It will increase national productivity and wealth dramatically while destroying the knowledge-based jobs of tens of millions of women. As a result, the women will get married, stay home, and have lots of kids. Problem solved; paradise attained.

Of course, there is absolutely no reason to believe that AI will actually do this. The most likely outcome of the new AI regime is greater inequality and an even larger divide between capital and labor, which is totally inconsistent with the dream of the Godly Society.

The battle against Trump’s laissez-faire approach to AI is being led by Florida, a red state with a highly reactionary governor. Even Byron Donalds, Trump’s handpicked candidate to succeed DeSantis, has broken with Orange Jesus on this issue. What does this portend for the future?

The reactionary base doesn’t even trust Trump on AI, partly because he has made very little effort to convert them. That presents an opening for someone like DeSantis in 2028.