Cromwell

A GOP candidate named Bo French caused a stir by complaining about the number of Asians at the University of Texas. Some Texas Republican bigwigs disowned his comments, but MAGA mostly piled on to support him.

The litigants in reverse discrimination cases typically were of Asian origin in order to preserve the illusion that the right was colorblind and meritocratic, not anti-black. This episode assures us that the protection of white Christians, not meritocracy, was always the ultimate goal for at least a large segment of the right.

The next logical step for MAGA is to impose a DEI program for white Christians at elite universities. Given the identity of his wife, that would be a hard pill for J.D. to swallow, but it’s on the way.

J.D. apparently told his audience to disregard the administration’s lousy record and vote for Republicans anyway because things could get better and the left was much worse during a podcast on Monday. Is this sales pitch likely to motivate the base?

It reminds me of the admonition to ignore the man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz.” It will probably be about as successful, too.

There is a new book out entitled “Profiles in Cowardice,” which, as you would expect, is about powerful people who rolled over for Trump. I haven’t read it, but I understand that Mitch McConnell is identified as one of the cowards, presumably because he voted against the second impeachment. Is that fair?

McConnell clearly decided not to convict at the second impeachment trial because he thought Trump was finished politically and he didn’t want to lose votes from the reactionary base. As it turned out, this was a colossal miscalculation–one that I’m sure he deeply regrets. That mistake doesn’t make him a coward; it makes him a fool.

All of us have been fools at one time or another. It is less morally reprehensible than being a coward. Let’s cut Mitch a little bit of slack.

“Have more kids than you can afford” is the rallying cry for Godly Society pro-natalists. It is also evidence of the futility of their cause. How many women are going to opt for poverty and desperation over economic security? Not too damn many, I would guess.

The attempts to use tariffs and deportations to make single earner families with lots of kids economically viable has already failed, and the advantages of AI for working people are speculative at best, so what can J.D. do? He can try making dramatic changes to the welfare state to help families with kids, but he will get plenty of resistance from members of his own party, and in any event, attempts to reward parents with large families have already failed in countries such as Hungary. There just aren’t enough carrots available to make it happen.

J.D. in power would have to use sticks. He knows the Griswold decision is vulnerable. He will test his instincts by proposing a federal ban on birth control. There is no other plausible option if he is genuinely determined to get what he wants.

The blue team’s view of sex is essentially that anything goes, but subject to three strict conditions: there must be no hint of coercion; both parties must give their fully informed consent; and no one, either inside or outside the relationship, can be injured. The right-wing critique of this position comes from two mutually exclusive directions. First, the traditional values crowd believes that the only acceptable kind of sex is between a married man and his wife; any other kind is immoral and destructive to society even if it has no immediate tangible negative impacts. Second, the male libertarians in the GOP despise the conditions placed on men by the allegedly overly feminized Democrats. They object to the puritanism of the left and believe that boys should be permitted to be boys.

Trump exemplifies the second line of attack, while J.D. is on the first team. The two agree only on their hatred for the left. Can the two views be reconciled in the long run, particularly if J.D. is in power and free to pursue his agenda? I doubt it.

How can reactionary politicians such as J.D. maintain good relations with both the techno-aristocracy and with the base? By constantly bashing the barons in public, while quietly opposing any meaningful effort by the government to regulate them.

Like the bankers during the Great Recession, the barons are notoriously touchy, so this tactic might not be completely successful. Most of them would probably buy into it if they understood the public jawboning as part of a dirty bargain, however. Self-interest trumps image most of the time, if not all of it, and some of the barons might even enjoy being portrayed as Bond villains. One in particular comes to mind.

Mike Johnson and J.D. have plenty in common. Both are prominent and ambitious Republican politicians with strong ties to the religious right. Both are therefore highly visible proponents of the Godly Society. And both of them have jobs which require them to maintain good relations with all of the factions of the GOP even when they have wildly different objectives.

Johnson has followed the Trumpian lead and is advocating for deregulation of AI in order to keep the tech barons and their CL supporters in line even though that position is difficult to reconcile with his otherwise reactionary views. J.D. hasn’t said much on the subject recently, but the comments he has made suggest he has made the same choice. If so, it may cost him dearly in the long run; the base has no love for the barons.

Donald Trump says concerns about AI and data centers are a HOAX. Steve Bannon, one of his most important acolytes, begs to differ. Trump has been unusually tone-deaf to the base on both AI issues and the Iran war over the last several months. Could the base peel away?

Trump and J.D. are going to have serious problems maintaining complete control over the base as long as AI and the war have the attention of the public. At some point, however, the war will end, and J.D. has consistently fought to keep the base united by focusing its attention on the danger presented by the left.

I think it depends on whether J.D. gets a serious challenge from a fellow reactionary during the campaign. If he does, it may become impossible to paper over the differences of opinion within the base. If not, the base will have nowhere else to go, and the blue team will have to hope its members just stay home in 2028.

As I’ve noted before, Trump is the Johnny Rocco of American politics–he always wants more. Specifically, more wealth and more power, both for himself and for the nation. He frequently brags about how he is making America rich. You can certainly argue that he has failed miserably in his objective, but there is little reason to doubt that most Americans agree with the objective itself.

J.D. is different. The Godly Society has more white children, but fewer working women and less wealth. It values social stability and morality over the acquisition of consumer goods.

Since Trump’s attempts to reconcile the two goals through the use of tariffs and mass deportations have already failed, J.D. will have to make a decision when he campaigns in 2028. Does he really have the nerve to demand that Americans learn to live with less? I have my doubts.

On the GOP midterm convention.

It didn’t get lots of attention.

First Trump and then Vance

Took a hard right-wing stance

But Iran and inflation weren’t mentioned.

As I’ve noted before, Rick Scott really, really, really hates government. He wants to torture it before he drowns it in the proverbial bathtub. He despises unproductive people, too. As with Mr. Scrooge, you have to believe he wishes we would just die and decrease the surplus population. At best, we should be securitized and sold off to unsuspecting European investors.

The Social Security cliff is in sight. Selling Social Security cuts to elderly Floridians who are completely dependent on the program for a living will be about as popular as selling Hitler to Jews. And yet, Scott will have to try if he is to remain true to his odious principles.

It should be fun to watch.

In 2017, I posted a set piece based on “Richard III” in which the Trump cabinet pledges allegiance to the omnipotent and omniscient president. When Mattis doesn’t show enough deference to the great man, he is summarily executed, and his head is put on a stick.

With Trump, satire can be prophecy. He demanded that all present pledge allegiance to his awesome self at last week’s pseudo-convention. I’m sure most of them did it, too.

If and when Pete Hegseth starts requiring all members of the military to swear allegiance to Trump personally instead of to the Constitution, you will know the process of turning them into a right-wing militia is nearly complete.

David French says the War on Terror was a success. He ties it to his experience in the Iraq War, which he continues to believe was justified. Is he right?

Mostly no. It is true, as he says, that Islamic terrorism is no longer the problem that it was a decade or so ago, and that the success of American troops in fighting IS contributed to that victory. As I noted at the time, however, history shows us that terrorism is a spasm that disappears when it fails to bring about meaningful positive change. It didn’t work for anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th century for the same reason that it didn’t work for IS.

As for Iraq, prior to the war, it was a brutal and somewhat unpredictable Sunni dictatorship that nonetheless was a reliable check on the ambitions of the ayatollahs in Iran and did not support terrorism. French tells the story from the middle of the book, not the beginning; the Bush invasion caused the Sunni backlash that resulted in the creation and spread of IS. In other words, the American military was both the arsonist and the fireman in Iraq.

In the long run, the invasion may well have improved the lives of Iraqi Shiites to some extent. It also turned Iraq into, for the most part, an Iranian client state. That totally predictable outcome was hardly a success for American foreign policy.

Trump says he wants the midterms to be a referendum on him. Of course he does! He thinks everything is about him.

Everyone to the left of MAGA should give him what he wants. The outcome will surprise him.

Pete Hegseth has come to the Oval Office to talk about life and times.

T: Heggy! It’s the 25th anniversary of 9/11. What are you doing to commemorate the event?

H: Well, first of all, I’m firing a bunch of generals and replacing them with competent white men. It’s all part of the war on DEI.

T: Excellent!

H: You know even better than I that only conservative white Christian men are fit to lead this country. They’re the only ones who are truly competent. Everyone else is a DEI baby. They have to go.

T: Right. Anything else?

H: We’re all thanking Jesus for sparing you on 9/11. Your heroism on that day was inspiring. I don’t think the country would have survived without you.

T: That’s true. The fake news just doesn’t get it. In light of the occasion, what are you doing to fight the real terrorist threat?

H: You mean, the radical Marxist Democrats?

T: Exactly!

H: They’re the real threat now. We crushed all of the foreigners. They call you “Sir.”

T: So what are you doing to save America from the left?

H: Working every day to change the culture. The military needs to know you’re the boss, and all that stuff about the Constitution is eyewash. They will obey your orders without question. Even if you tell them to shoot unarmed protesters and arrest opposition politicians.

T: Excellent! There are people out there who say that you’re incompetent, because you were lax about secrets, replaced good leaders with suck-ups, and failed to win the war in Iran. They just don’t understand what the real mission is here.

H: Absolutely! And don’t worry about Iran. It’s under control. We’ll win in the end, because you’re a winner. Everything you touch always turns out OK. It’s God’s will.

T: A man after my own heart. You even sound like me. Now go out and fire those DEI babies!