Cromwell

To the surprise of no one, the NYT has revealed that Marco Rubio is actually running Venezuela. What does that mean for the future of liberal democracy there?

If Venezuela had a freely elected leader, he or she would have the legitimacy and plenty of incentive to demand that the United States return full sovereignty to the new government. We would no longer have any kind of moral claim to control Venezuela’s revenues. How would Trump respond to that?

Not well, I imagine; for him, it was always about the oil. Better to keep Delcy in charge for the foreseeable future.

Trump is frustrated. He continues to tell us that the Iranian negotiating team has capitulated to all of his demands, but shortly thereafter, Iran launches new attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. These people are crazy, and they negotiate in bad faith.

In all likelihood, of course, Trump is lying about the concessions made by the Iranian negotiators, but you can appreciate his frustration. Dealing with people who don’t keep their word and contradict in public what they say in private–he might as well be negotiating with himself.

They are both angry, flamboyant partisans with plenty of skeletons in their closets. But are they different in other ways?

Platner, as I understand it, was discovered and groomed to be a candidate by consultants who thought he had the look and the personality to win over working-class voters in Maine. He was abandoned by the Democratic Party when his liabilities became overwhelming. Paxton, on the other hand, is a self-created politician with views on the right edge of the GOP mainstream who succeeded in holding on to his support in the party in spite of his personal failings.

1. He probably had a heart attack when he figured out that American military power was actually not the solution to all of the world’s problems.
2. Nikki Haley should be his replacement. She is the only politician I know who loves imperial Israel more than Lindsey, and she conveniently lives in South Carolina.
3. I will have to come up with a new foil for Trump in my “The Emperor Enthroned” series. It will probably be a combination of Marco and J.D.
4. Fortunately for Lindsey, he sold his soul to Donald Trump, not the Devil. But is there really much of a difference?

Dreher also argues that the current baby bust is the result of the decline of Christianity in America. Does the evidence support his claim?

No, for two reasons. First, the baby bust is a worldwide phenomenon; it has no particular ties to Christian nations. Second, it is inconsistent with American history. You would have trouble arguing that America was a more Christian nation in the 1950s than in the 1930s, but the latter produced the relatively small Silent Generation, while the former resulted in a baby boom. Why the difference? The obvious answer is the contrast between the Great Depression and the economic expansion after World War II.

The fact is that declining birth rates are primarily due to the greater personal autonomy and economic power of women in today’s world. The costs of having a baby–soaring childcare expenses, the inability to find appropriate housing, the obstacles created in getting ahead at work, and the disproportionate burden placed on women to do household chores–are not fully mitigated by the financial incentives provided by any pro-natalist government, including those of Hungary and China.

To put it another way, the advocates of having more children than you can afford didn’t do that themselves, because they have plenty of money, and asking young families to live on the edge of economic disaster for the good of the team is both unreasonable and unrealistic.

Our old friend Rod Dreher really, really hates wokeness. He has labeled it “soft totalitarianism,” which makes no sense to me, because the vast majority of residents of red states have only been exposed to wokeness through Fox News; it never intrudes into their lives through interactions with their colleagues, neighbors, and family members. Nevertheless, it is a concept that is widely accepted among members of the New Right.

No longer welcome in Hungary, Dreher has returned to the US, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He is concerned about the antisemitism and paganism that runs rampant among extreme right-wingers in government and on the internet. He offers no solutions to this problem, however.

Whatever you might think of wokeness, its adherents at least censored the most obnoxious parts of the New Right. Dreher either needs to identify and support a right-wing gatekeeper who will serve the same purpose–Elon Musk doesn’t cut it–or show a bit more sympathy for the left.

It isn’t just Iran. Trump somehow thought he could force GOP senators to abolish the filibuster and approve his previous SAVE Act by withholding his approval of the bipartisan housing bill. They refused, and the bill became law without his signature, which means that the GOP can’t boast about it on the campaign trail and the president looks petty and ineffectual.

It’s only going to get worse. Trump no longer has the ability to endorse challengers in 2026 primaries. For the next two years, the focus of attention will shift from the man on golf cart to his successor. Then what?

Oh, right. He still has the military and the Insurrection Act. They are his ultimate source of leverage against all of us.

Springfield, Ohio, like most of its neighbors, struggled after its industries died as a result of globalization. Thousands of Haitian refugees found a haven there and revitalized the place. Not everyone appreciated the change; J.D. said the Haitians were eating dogs and cats; and the rest is history.

Now that the Supreme Court has given the OK for mass deportations of Haitians from Springfield and elsewhere, two questions have arisen. Will ICE seek to make an example of them by launching a Minnesota-style invasion in Springfield? And will Ramaswamy have the nerve to break from his party’s leadership and defend the Haitians during the campaign? After all, he purports to be pro-immigrant.

Two things are certain: Springfield is going to decline again, and J.D. is going to wear it. Look for lots of campaign commercials featuring what happened to Springfield in 2028.

Most of the chatter about the failures of liberal democracy revolve around the economic problems–mostly slow growth and increased inequality–of the past few decades. I have previously dismissed GDP growth as the essence of our system, but let’s take the criticism seriously. Does it hold water?

The obvious question is, compared to what? Hitler’s military Keynesianism, which ultimately resulted in World War II? Spain’s stagnation under Franco? The USSR? Give me a break.

The only possible response is today’s China, which involved the application of tactics used by Japan and South Korea to a nation with a much larger market. Economic growth in China has slowed significantly and is increasingly being used to benefit the state rather than the population. If that’s all you have to support authoritarianism over liberal democracy, you had better think again.

The Trump war is back on–sort of. It began as an attempt at regime change, morphed into a battle to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and now is all about the Strait of Hormuz. That fact, in and of itself, is a defeat for Trump, since the Strait was open before his war.

The great man, as always, needs more leverage to impose his will on the Iranians. Where can he find it? Reducing government revenues through the blockade and destroying Iran’s conventional forces didn’t work. It isn’t realistically possible to eliminate the threat to shipping in the Strait by bombing speedboats and drone factories. That leaves bombing civilian infrastructure, a large-scale ground invasion, or using nukes as potentially viable options.

More likely, Trump will ultimately give in for domestic political reasons, and the Iranians will control the Strait for the foreseeable future.

Florida’s Attorney General, an intense, flamboyant reactionary and DeSantis supporter, has filed a federal action against Open AI involving, as I understand it, guardrails for children. Trump, of course, dislikes the idea of state AI regulation, even by red states. The case has been assigned to–wait for it–Judge Cannon, Trump’s judicial best friend.

In other words, this is a proxy battle of prominent reactionaries that will be decided by a reactionary who has already established her subservience to Trump. Buy your popcorn before it runs out.

What is liberal democracy? It is characterized by a belief in the wisdom of the crowd, optimism that the truth will prevail in the long run if the playing field is reasonably level, tolerance of opposing viewpoints, and the understanding that, no matter how wise you are, you may be wrong. It attempts to balance the power of the majority with individual rights; it believes that government should be limited, and arbitrary treatment of anyone prohibited; and it rejects any attempt to impose ideology on anyone’s conscience. It is largely coterminous with the Bill of Rights.

Liberal democracy is not an attempt to dictate the size of the state; it is compatible with both large and small welfare states. While it has been, on the whole, good for economic growth, it revolves around individual rights and happiness, not GDP.

Is liberal democracy failing in the US? Not if you ask its greatest American enemy, Donald Trump. While some members of the New Right explicitly oppose both liberalism and democracy, Trump insists that his political opponents used illiberal tactics against him and his followers and argues that he is just restoring the necessary balance to the system. That’s complete BS, of course, but it shows that he lacks the imagination and the nerve to advocate for a different system, unlike some of his more intellectual supporters.

The J.D. of “Hillbilly Elegy” fame was a CL, not a Reactionary. He didn’t support Trump, and he didn’t call for tariffs or limits on illegal immigration. He put the blame for the struggling workers in Ohio and Kentucky on the personal failings of the workers themselves and on the government for its ham-handed interventions in their lives. Less government and more personal responsibility were the solutions to the regional problems.

The J.D. of 2024 promoted WASP culture and “legacy Americans.” He distinguished between the descendants of people who were here during the Civil War, who are real Americans, and the rest of us, who should just shut up and let the first group run the country. This America is based on soil, not adherence to creeds.

The J.D. of “Communion” is a conservative Catholic who thinks that Americans should have more kids than they can afford. This is, of course, a creed–just not one based on adherence to the Declaration and the Constitution.

From a political perspective, the evolution of J.D. creates two serious problems. First, the positions I have just described do not command the support of a majority of Republicans, let alone general election voters; and second, they are mutually exclusive. If J.D. faces serious opposition during the 2028 primaries, you can rest assured that these potential weaknesses will be exposed and exploited to the hilt.

How will J.D. respond? By relying on Trump–the power that dissolves all logical contradictions–to persuade the electorate to ignore it.

The conservative Catholic J.D.

Thinks that service to God makes us free.

The American way

Is declining today.

It’s the immigrants’ fault, don’t you see?

Like other American presidents before him, Trump has always demanded that Europe bear more of the burden of defending itself. What Trump really wants, however, is to be Europe’s boss, and to compel payment to America for protection. If the Europeans actually do as he asks and become self-sufficient, they will have no reason to suck up to him on tariffs or digital services or Greenland or anything else.

He will, in effect, be forcing Europe to be great again, to America’s cost, at least in his eyes.