Month: February 2020

Viruses and terrorists have something in common: if you don’t stop them overseas, you have to crush them at home. Which is the better approach?

Neither is perfect. The problem with operating abroad is that you don’t know the terrain, and you have to work with local partners who are generally far from perfect. The problem with creating “Fortress America” is that the border is the last line of defense, and you may have to impose restrictions on freedom of movement that are obnoxious to the American public and are largely unnecessary.

The best approach combines elements of both, and adapts to facts on the ground on a case-by-case basis. One thing is for certain; simply withdrawing from the world without considering the consequences is a recipe for disaster at home.

Ross Douthat wrote a lengthy column, entitled “The Age of Decadence,” in yesterday’s NYT. It touched upon some of the themes of my previous “Baroque America” post, so I thought it would be useful to compare the two and add some perspective to both.

I think “baroque” is a better term than “decadent,” simply because it sounds less judgmental. The intended meaning, however, is pretty similar. “Baroque” is associated with a failed mission, exhaustion, an appreciation of limits, extravagant displays of emotion, and an emphasis on spectacle over simple substance. Can anyone deny that those are characteristics of today’s America with a straight face?

This isn’t new, even for our relatively young country. I know baroque. I grew up in the 1970’s–the time of the fall of Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, inflation, soaring crime, and Watergate. Those events were the equivalent for people of my age to 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Great Recession. The sense of American decline was palpable. Reagan was elected in 1980, however, and for both better and worse, the moment passed.

What is missing from the Douthat column is the understanding that baroque never lasts, particularly in a society as fluid as ours; decline is inevitably followed by some sort of renewal, even though, on the whole, it may not be positive. What could cause that to occur this time? Here are some possibilities:

1. A confrontation with China: If anyone understands decline and renewal, it’s the Chinese, who associate it with the rise and fall of dynasties. If there is one thing that all Americans agree on, it is the need to stand up to the Chinese. That could lead to a conflict which is far more pressing than any issue we see today.
2. An unexpected innovation: The point is often made that, Andrew Yang notwithstanding, we are becoming less, not more, innovative as we age as a society. Innovation, however, is unpredictable. What happens if, say, someone suddenly invents a battery that can transform the way we produce and store energy? It would change our economic landscape, and the baroque period would probably pass.
3. Climate change: The nation will have to unite at some point to deal with climate change. It is only a question of whether we deal with the disease or pay even more to treat the symptoms.
4. Political implosion: The conflict between left-leaning, politically correct millennials and Flight 93 Republicans is going to get worse before it gets better. There is no guarantee that the center will hold, and the implications to our system of government could be very serious.

The Chinese have had their Uighur camps for a few years now. Muslim camps seem inevitable in India. And, of course, there are refugee camps of various kinds all over the world. It’s a 2020 thing, and the combination of political turmoil and climate change is likely to make it worse.

Nationalism has had a bad name since World War II. People like Steve Bannon and Rich Lowry wonder why. Could this, just possibly, be part of the answer?

When you get past celebrating your own country and culture to denigrating someone else’s, this is the ultimate destination. That is the difference between patriotism, which is a virtue, and nationalism, which isn’t.

Barack Obama had to be talked to intervening in Libya by the British and the French. The usual tag team of McCain and Graham supported it, too. The initial action was a success, but there was no plan to run the country, and it fell into anarchy. The GOP would probably beg to differ, but Obama considered it to be the worst foreign policy mistake of his presidency, and he may well have been right.

How times have changed! McCain is dead; Graham is now Trump’s bootlicker-in-chief; the British and French don’t have a solution to the ongoing strife; there are so many countries with troops in Libya that it looks like the Spanish Civil War, with oil substituting for extremist ideology; and Trump couldn’t care less. Erdogan and Putin are trying to fill the vacuum created by our absence by making deals. Is the lack of American leadership a problem?

Possibly for the poor Libyans, but not for us. Unlike Graham and McCain, I have never believed that the national ego requires us to play a leading role in resolving issues that don’t touch our interests. Disengaging with the world is a mistake, but we need to do a better job of picking our spots. If Putin and Erdogan can bring peace to Libya, God bless them.

“Forget the tweets,” the Trump campaign says to suburban moderates. “They’re just entertainment for the base. They’re not real. What’s real is a booming economy, and your tax cut. We’re also more or less at peace. Do you really want to put all that at risk by voting for a Democrat?”

“Forget the regressive tax cut,” the Trump campaign says to the rural white Christian base. “Forget the billionaires in the Cabinet and the anti-worker regulations and the proposals to take away your health insurance. They’re not real. What’s real is the tweets. Trump is on your side against the illegal immigrants and the uppity women and the lazy minorities who want cuts in line. He tells you that every day. Do you really want to put all that at risk by voting for a Democrat?”

These sales pitches are obviously mutually exclusive. The job of the Democratic nominee is to make everyone in America aware of it.

1. We’ve reached a kind of equilibrium with seven people on stage. No one was remarkably good or inept. Don’t expect to see any great movement as the result of a debate until the field has been culled, and the dynamics change. That should happen after NH; the only serious contenders remaining will be the top four, with Bloomberg waiting in the wings and speaking solely through his commercials.

2. Biden needed a strong performance to avoid an implosion. While some have questioned his attempt to downplay expectations by predicting a loss in NH, he generally performed pretty well. For realo voters, that’s a mixed bag; he needs to either win or get out of Mayor Pete’s way, because Sanders is the alternative. NH won’t give us the answer to that question, but Nevada might, and SC definitely will.

3. Biden at least has a firewall. Warren doesn’t. If she doesn’t win in NH, and there is no reason to believe she will, she’s effectively finished. If she continues, and my guess is she will, her role in the process will be to divide the fundi vote and help the realos defeat Sanders.

4. The longer the realo vote remains split, the better things look for Trump. It could be, in a sadly ironic way, the 2016 campaign all over again, with Sanders, like Trump before him, winning due to the lack of effective opposition in his extremist lane.

5. Mayor Pete is the only plausible unity candidate left in the field, given Warren’s unwillingness to separate herself from Sanders. That may well be the best reason to vote for him.

If you’re a democratic socialist, do you really want Sanders to be the nominee? The question isn’t as dumb as you think.

America is just not ready for socialism. If Sanders actually does get the nomination, he is likely to get slaughtered in November, and the cause will be set back decades. If, somehow, he wins, his program won’t enjoy majority support in his own party, let alone Congress as a whole. Intense frustration will set in, and the Democratic Party will tear itself apart, which only aids Republicans.

In short, he would be the American version of Ramsay McDonald. That doesn’t sound great to me. The better alternative, from the socialist perspective, is a moderate who loses to Trump, who then drives America further to the left with four more years of madness. AOC would be waiting in the wings, and lots of reactionary boomers will have died in the interim. The future would be much brighter, assuming, of course, that we all survive the four more years of Trump, which cannot be taken for granted.

Social conservatives like to draw an analogy between abortion and slavery, because it suggests that they are on the right side of both morality and history. Are they right?

There are, admittedly, some similarities. Both involve moral/philosophical propositions (people are not merely the property of another; a fertilized egg is a person) that are not susceptible of empirical proof or disproof. In both cases, public opinion was passionate and sharply divided. The two issues have been fought in both the judicial and political arenas. Finally, the majority of public opinion in both situations supported compromises that satisfied neither side.

Leaving aside the intellectual merits of the two arguments, however, there are two major differences which dictate a different result. The United States in 1861 was outside of the mainstream of world opinion on slavery; that is not the case with abortion. Second, permitting abortion is consistent with individual freedom, while slavery required the use of state power to deny freedom. Shouldn’t the presumption operate in favor of individual liberty in a political system that makes it an overriding value?

Donald Trump: Hummer. The essence of ugly, hostile toxic masculinity.

Elizabeth Warren: Prius. Self-righteously on the left.

Bernie Sanders: VW Beetle. A left-leaning relic from the sixties.

Mayor Pete: Volvo. Highly engineered, slightly exotic, but safe family car.

Amy Klobuchar: Ford Explorer. Middle of the road; safe; domestic; appeals to soccer moms.

Joe Biden: A used Chevy Impala. It’s in the middle of the road and out of date, but it still runs.

Andrew Yang: Tesla. A vision for the future, of course.

Trump apparently ripped Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romney at the NPB this morning. He’s offended that they cited their religious faith as a reason for their actions on impeachment.

Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. What’s really pathetic is that most of the audience probably agreed with him.

I’ve never been a big fan of Taylor Swift’s music; her songs don’t soar, like Florence’s, and her lyrics depict a world that has little to do with me. That said, I’ve seen her on TV in unscripted situations on several occasions, and she has always come across as being extremely bright, detail-oriented, and analytical. As a result, I thought “Miss Americana” would be worth watching. I was not disappointed.

What makes “Miss Americana” different from most such documentaries is the presence of a clear narrative that is created, not by the filmmaker, but by Ms. Swift herself. As she tells the story, she grew up believing that her role in life was to please other people, and that if she worked hard and did well, success was inevitable. All went well at first, but then a large segment of the population unaccountably turned against her, and she was left scarred and bewildered. The groping episode made her more aware of feminist issues, as well. In the end, she found her own voice and stopped worrying so much about the opinions of others, on the internet and otherwise. It is ultimately a story of hope and liberation, not a tiresome litany of complaints.

The narrative is a little too pat to be completely true; undoubtedly, the real story, to the extent that it can be ascertained, is murkier and more complex than that. It isn’t over, either. Virtually everything in the movie rings true, however, and it is well worth seeing.

The realo candidates collectively received more votes than the fundis in Iowa. Should we be encouraged by that?

Not really. The Remain parties got more votes than Leave in the 2019 UK election, and you know how that turned out. The Remain votes were split, and the Conservatives, as I predicted, won a crushing victory.

There is a scenario in which Sanders is running unopposed in the progressive lane by Super Tuesday, and there are three viable candidates still scrapping for realo votes. If that happens, Sanders is probably going to be the nominee, and disaster looms.

The bottom line is that the realo faction needs to pick a single candidate, and stick with him, by Super Tuesday. Period.

Out of all of the Republicans in Congress, exactly one took his oath of office seriously–Mitt Romney. Romney’s vote can’t have been inspired by electoral self-interest, and the ostracism that will follow won’t be worth the settlement of any personal scores with Trump, so there is no reason to doubt that he was acting purely out of a sense of duty. Will he pay a price for it at the ballot box?

Probably not, for the following reasons:

1. He has five years left in his term;

2. At his age, he may not run again;

3. Even if he does run, the Mormons in Utah have never embraced Trump the way evangelicals and reactionary Catholics have. His personal morality is still an issue with them. I suspect many of them will approve of Romney’s vote. As a result, even if a Trumpian hack runs against him in a primary in 2024, I doubt he can be beaten.

It’s finally over. Who won?

Removing Trump from office was never a realistic objective. The most the Democrats could reasonably hope for was to thoroughly expose Trump’s malign and dangerous behavior, to deter foreign governments from responding to any future entreaties from him for assistance, and to show the world that the GOP (including some vulnerable senators) was his willing accomplice. They succeeded admirably in all three.

Romney’s vote to convict was the icing on the cake. It completely blew up any concept that Trump was the victim of a partisan witch hunt, and it blunted any immediate public relations advantage arising from the acquittal. Will Romney pay a price for it? More on that in a future post.

Barack Obama owed his success in politics to three things: a compelling, unconventional life history; a cold, penetrating intellect; and the ability to inspire with soaring rhetoric. Mayor Pete has the first two, but not the third. Is it enough?

Of all of the candidates left in the field, Mayor Pete is the one whose thought processes most resemble my own. His positions on the issues are also close to mine, and he has a better understanding of identity and values issues than the other candidates. The contrasts between him and Trump could not be clearer. If he gets the nomination, I will be happy to support him.

My guess, however, is that the majority of Americans, and particularly African-Americans, will look at Mayor Pete and see a former McKinsey consultant who views them as problems to be solved, not kindred souls on the road to who knows where. I could be wrong, but I just don’t think that’s enough to win the nomination, let alone to defeat the Wizard of Id.