Month: July 2019

Members of the Squad apparently don’t like the analogy to the House Freedom Caucus, but it is fair; both are small groups of self-righteous ideological extremists who make life miserable for the leadership by creating obstacles to the ordinary day-to-day operation of government. The difference between the two is one of scale; the HFC has more votes, and therefore more clout, than the Squad.

The factional phenomenon is not limited to the US. The Conservative Party has the ERG, which operates largely as a party within a party. The number of factions within Labour is growing, too. What is going on here?

The answer is social media. In the past, if you were a backbencher, the only way to make a name for yourself was to shut up, follow the leadership, and wait your turn. Today, rookies with large followings on Twitter feel entitled to chart their own course. And they do.

So how does this end? When the backbenchers slowly come to realize that retweets are not the same as votes, and that mobilizing the blue base in California doesn’t win you any seats in Montana, where you actually need them.

She’s better than Bernie, but not to the point of being woke.

Sanders is essentially a Marxist. He views politics as being a manifestation of the class struggle. Identity politics, for him, are at best an annoying distraction, and at worst are an effort by a ruling plutocratic class to divide the working class. As a result, he writes columns like the one in the WaPo last week in which he argued that the best way to resolve racial issues is to rein in the economic and political power of the one percent.

That, of course, means that African-Americans have to view reactionary white workers as being their allies, and invisible people on Wall Street as their enemies. That is both counterintuitive and the antithesis of being woke.

Warren is not a Marxist, and is more intellectually flexible than Sanders on racial issues. She is capable of having a discussion on identity issues that does not run through the class struggle. That said, she is still primarily a class-based politician, and her principal enemies are rogue capitalists, not racist white workers. And so, in spite of her best efforts, you can’t really call her woke; she doesn’t believe that identity drives everything, or even the most important things.

I was just watching some video on Vox in which various Fox News hosts described AOC as stupid, deliberately ignorant of policy, corrupt, and authoritarian.

Given their unquestioning support for a man who actually does embody all of those qualities, are they really insulting her?

Vox, a fairly woke outfit, ran an article about a Kirsten Gillibrand campaign stop in Youngstown a few days ago. Gillibrand was apparently confronted by a woman who, alluding to the impacts of the closure of the Lordstown GM plant on its largely white workforce, wanted to know why Democrats liked to talk about “white privilege.” Gillibrand responded by saying that both the newly-unemployed white workers and African-Americans caught in a racist law enforcement system had legitimate grievances, and she felt everyone’s pain.

Her response was cited with approval by the writer, and it might well have been reasonable and prudent, but it wasn’t woke. A genuinely woke person would have reminded the woman that, regardless of her temporary problems with the system, she was an oppressor who lived off wealth stolen from African-Americans, and she needed to write a reparation check to them as penance.

The problem for the Democrats is that the majority of their own party, to say nothing of the electorate as a whole, isn’t woke, even though their activists generally are. The following reactions are possible:

1. Ignore the activists, play to the center, and oppose reparations altogether (Biden);
2. Try to thread the needle and offer sympathy and an ongoing discussion about reparations, but no concrete plan (Warren, Sanders);
3. Propose specific measures that look a bit like reparations, but without the side dish of guilt (Booker, Harris); or
4. Embrace the whole program, and commit electoral suicide (no one, for obvious reasons).

If you’re Ta-Nehisi Coates, the high priest of reparations, you don’t really care about getting Trump out of office; in fact, four more years of Trump outrages will probably bring you closer to your goal, so you support #4 even if it means losing in 2020. The rest of us have to worry about such lesser items as the erosion of our liberal democratic system, nuclear war, and the like; we don’t have the luxury of waiting until 2024 for relief, so discussions about reparations need to be shelved as soon as possible.

GET BACK

Saikat was a man who thought he was progressive.

He loved to call the center right.

Saikat went too far; the leadership rebuked him.

But he’s not giving up the fight.

________________

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, Saikat!

___________________

AOC’s the model of a lefty woman.

She’s the queen of Twitter, now.

She insists Pelosi had it coming to her

But she can’t get the votes, no how.

___________________________

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, AOC!

Parody of “Get Back” by The Beatles.

The right unquestionably won the Israeli election a few months ago. However, Netanyahu was unable to broker a deal between the nationalist and ultra-religious elements of the right, so the election is essentially being rerun. The Israeli public, I suspect, is not thrilled.

Who will be blamed for the impasse? Bibi is the luckiest man in Israel, and the voters for religious parties have no real alternatives, so I’m predicting that the nationalists will take the hit. Likud will win seats away from them, the religious parties will get their way, and the deal will ultimately be made.

In light of Trump’s most recent tweets, I need to begin this post by saying that there is genuine racism emanating from this administration that anyone can recognize, whether woke or not. The general condemnation of those tweets was completely appropriate.

With that behind me, consider the plight of the truly woke straight white man. He has been identified as an oppressor by virtue of his identity, regardless of any actual oppressive behavior on his part. He accepts his guilt. What is he to do to pay for his original sin?

I suppose he could start by liquidating all of his wealth and giving it to the African-Americans from whom he allegedly stole it. Since even woke people will be reluctant to go that far, there are two things he can do to show his solidarity with oppressed people that are unlikely to cost him anything:

1. GIVE VOCAL SUPPORT TO REPARATIONS FOR ALL OPPRESSED GROUPS. This includes, at a minimum, African-Americans, Native Americans, and gay people. The good news is that this is a blank check which is unlikely to be cashed in the future, as the vast majority of Americans are unwoke and will never accept reparations. His money is safe for the foreseeable future.
2. JOIN TWITTER MOBS SUPPORTING OPPRESSED PEOPLE. Serena Williams and Beyoncé in particular are women of color who are icons, not merely celebrities. Any criticism of them must clearly be inspired by racism. Weigh in and join the millions threatening vengeance whenever they are slighted, regardless of the reason.

It’s not enough, of course, but what else can he do? Identity is not a matter of choice. The only real solution would be suicide.

At its simplest level, being woke means being sensitive to any action or statement by a straight white person (usually male) which appears to treat anyone who is a person of color, engages in unconventional sexual practices, or is female as an inferior. It is a form of heightened consciousness filtered through history.

In its purest form, wokeness is an all-encompassing world view, similar in its way to Marxism, which revolves around issues of identity rather than class. You could call it identity determinism. As the story goes, straight white men inevitably oppress people of color, and falsely attribute whatever success they have in life to their own efforts instead of their ability to steal from oppressed groups, simply because they are straight white men. The phenomenon exists regardless of income, education, or any other variable. Hence the electoral success of Donald Trump, and his high degree of support among white people; they were just doing what comes naturally to them.

Here are some of the characteristics of wokeness:

1. A woke person completely rejects the conventional and comfortable narrative tying American history to freedom and progress. To a woke person, America is, and always has been, a land of oppression. The Declaration of Independence was a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy, the Constitution enshrined existing racial prejudices into our system of government, and Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement were failures, as evidenced by the wealth gap separating white people and people of color. The rest of the story doesn’t really matter in the big picture.
2. There is a hierarchy of wokeness, with discrimination against African-Americans at the top. The grievances of women, gay people, and other minority groups get lower priority, although they are not completely ignored. White women in particular can be viewed as oppressors in some contexts.
3. To the extent there is a remedy for hundreds of years of unmitigated oppression, it is through reparations. Reparations for African-Americans get most of the publicity, of course, but there have been proposals to extend the concept to Native Americans and gay people, as well.

So what can you do if you’re white and woke? I will post on that tomorrow.

The next week will be dedicated to an analysis of the Great Awokening! So check your white privilege at the door and read on! It’ll be great!

Trust me. Trust me.

(Donald Trump has reconvened the meeting of his fellow strongmen at his DC hotel. Erdogan is the first to arrive.)

E: Mr. President! Good to see you!

T: Good to see you, too! Sorry about the election loss in Istanbul. I guess the fake news got you.

E: Yes, and the high interest rates, too. They cause inflation and screw up the economy, you know. You would understand more than most.

T: True. Anyway, feel free to drown your sorrows. We’re having two-for=one at the bar.

E: I’ll pass, for now. (He heads off. Putin arrives.)

T: Vlad the Impaler! What’s up, bro? How’s my favorite Russian!

P: Very well, thank you. Congratulations on beating Mueller, although I must say, it took longer than expected.

T: It’s the rigged system. You know how it is. It’s not as if I gave you anything in exchange for your help.

P: Yeah, and we need to talk about that. You owe me. When are you going to do something about those sanctions?

T: Just wait until I’m re-elected. Then I’m free to do anything I want.

P: I’ve been waiting for a long time, you know. I’m tired of the excuses about your democratic system. It’s time to be a real strongman and show some balls.

(Duterte has entered the room.)

T: Rodrigo, you son-of-a-bitch! Welcome!

D: Trump, you son-of-a-whore! Good to be here!

T: I have a question for you. You’ve killed thousands of people–not that they don’t deserve it–and yet your polls are sky high. How do you do it?

D: Just ignore the fake news and stick to your guns. Literally.

P: See! There’s a man who understands what it means to be a strongman! If you see a problem, get rid of it!

(Xi has arrived with a large entourage.)

T: There’s my Chinaman! What’s up with the posse?

X: We’re all staying at your hotel. It enriches you personally and reduces the trade deficit.

T: Hey, great idea!

X: We know how the game is played. We weren’t born yesterday. We’ve been dealing with barbarians for thousands of years.

T: So when are you going to end the trade war?

X: When are YOU going to end the trade war? We can’t even figure out what you really want.

T: I love being unpredictable. It’s my stock in trade. The base loves it.

X: It also makes negotiations difficult. When are you going to tell us your bottom line?

T: You never know. Maybe now, maybe later. We’ll see.

(The last guest has arrived. The room erupts.)

ALL: Kim! (Once again, it sounds like they’re greeting Norm at Cheers.)

T: Little Rocketman! Glad you could make it!

K: Is Dennis here?

T: I tried to get him, but he’s still pissed off at me for being fired on “The Apprentice.” I bought you something instead.

(He gives Kim a framed photo of a nuclear test from the fifties.)

K: I love it! A foreshadowing, perhaps?

T: Yes, but where? That’s the real question. (Kim wanders off; Trump goes to the microphone.)

T: OK, people, I have some special entertainment lined up for you, including a special guest! (He opens the door, and out walks . . . MBS.)

MBS: Tonight, we’re going to watch a movie that not many people have seen before. I call it “The Last Moments of Khashoggi.”

P: This is going to be awesome!

E: I’m out of here. (The rest stay and enjoy the movie.)

If you have a chance to read Ai Weiwei’s column about Hong Kong in today’s NYT, do it. It does a wonderful job, in a backhanded way, of describing how liberal democracy should not be judged exclusively, or even primarily, in terms of economic growth.

Just because I think the current version of Hong Kong is doomed doesn’t mean I lack sympathy with the protestors. In a way, it makes them more admirable, not less.

Readers of this blog will know that I have consistently opposed free public college. I view college as an investment, much like buying a house, not a public necessity. It makes sense for many people, and usually pays off, but not for everyone. Why should the large number of people who choose not to go to college be taxed for the benefit of others, particularly when the investment is usually made by future white collar workers, and pays off? It doesn’t make sense to me.

At least you can make a straight-face argument that the knowledge economy requires wider access to college, and that a degree is now effectively the new secondary education. But what is the public benefit attached to wiping out all existing student debt? How can that be justified, not only to taxpayers who didn’t go to college, but to people who scrimped and sacrificed and paid off their loans? Debt forgiveness doesn’t increase access; it is just a bailout, mostly for people who actually made a successful investment.

Wiping out student debt is a pander directed at the millennial vote, pure and simple. The taxpayers didn’t pay off my mortgage; I’m not the least bit interested in paying off an entire class of debts (with some possible exceptions on an individual basis for extreme hardship cases) unless, as with the banks in the Great Recession, not to do so will result in a national disaster.

On the Democrat candidate Joe.

He sounds a bit old, don’t you know.

He’d best up his game;

Not rely on his fame;

‘Cause he’s still got a long way to go.

The Fed nominee known as Judy

Thinks fealty to Trump is her duty.

She’s been big on gold

But that seems so old

High interest rates make her boss moody.

To Paul Krugman, the problem is the .001 percent, which has sucked up virtually all of the added wealth over the last 40 years. To people like David Brooks and Ross Douthat, it is the 20 percent, with their helicopter parenting, educational advantages, and gated communities. Who is right?

They are talking about different things. Krugman’s concern is about inequalities in wealth. The numbers back him up; the 20 percent has basically broken even since Reagan, while the .001 percent has thrived, to say the least. GOP pundits are more excised about social mobility, which probably has declined as a result of credentialism and the shift to a knowledge-based economy.

Which is the bigger problem? Since I’m not a member of the .001 percent, I’m naturally going to say wealth inequality, which has corrosive effects on our economy and our political system. I will admit the point is debatable, and that the perspective of a reactionary worker might be different. One thing is certain, however; regulating growing wealth inequality is a lot easier at the federal level than barriers to social mobility, which are created by innumerable decisions of private individuals, institutions, and local governments.