Month: July 2020

The average reactionary will indignantly deny he’s a racist. He gets along fine with black people, he will tell you. He may even have a black friend or two. He just hates the bad ones: the lazy ones who lounge in the hammock of dependency, pick his pocket, and scream about being the victims of discrimination. He’s the victim here! He’s a hard working real American, but does he get any credit for it? No! The government just takes the little money he has and gives lazy people who don’t deserve it cuts in line through massive affirmative action programs. Then they riot and loot when they can’t get their way! That’s what he just can’t stand.

Now, multiply this profile by about a hundred million, and imagine trying to sell what amounts to a supercharged version of affirmative action to the electorate. Try telling this guy he has white privilege, and should feel guilty for it. He’s more likely to use his cherished Second Amendment rights on you than to agree with you.

Establishing a methodology to compute the amount of the payment is relatively easy if the intent is to close the wealth gap; this information is readily available from public sources. But the ultimate decision would be political. Three questions would be pertinent:

1. Would it actually do much good?
2. Would it bring closure to the issue?
3. Can we afford it?

So what is an appropriate number? We could clearly afford $1,000 per household, based on the most recent stimulus payment, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to close the gap, and it wouldn’t put an end to the issue. $5,000–same thing. $10,000? Now we’re talking about an enormous hit to the budget, but it still wouldn’t be enough for a black family to buy a car, let alone put the issue to bed. No, based on the numbers I have seen, the payment would have to be at least $50,000. The budgetary implications of that would be immense.

From my perspective, putting this kind of money into social programs that are race-blind on their face, but disproportionately help black people, would make a lot more sense.

The center right and center left parties in Germany have been in coalition for years. Macron effectively represents both sides of the moderate part of the French political spectrum against populists on the right and left. In Italy, an erratic left-wing populist party formed a brief and unwieldy coalition with a far right party. Is this combination of moderates against extremists the future of American politics?

Probably not in the short run. As long as Trump is president, the left will be united against him, and Biden seems to be working effectively with Sanders supporters at the moment. In the long run, I can definitely see it happening, as elderly liberals die off and are replaced by cancel culture warriors and socialists. The moderate right has been moribund since 2008; it will ultimately have to choose between a coalition with the moderate left or with an extreme right that openly values racism and Christianity over liberal democracy. My guess is that we’re a decade away from a development that promises great danger for our political system.

I was guessing before the release of the decisions on the tax returns that the Chief Justice had the following objectives:

1. Protect the Trump re-election campaign from any embarrassing disclosures;
2. Avoid any obvious departures from precedent that would make the Court look overly partisan; and
3. Make sure that the opinions leave enough room for a future GOP Congress to investigate a Democratic president.

It appears that he accomplished all three.

The opinion in the New York case is unobjectionable. The cases involving Congress are going to make it significantly harder for the legislature to do its job. Given the outcome of those cases and the decision on Count II of the impeachment bill, future presidents with legal trouble will simply stonewall Congress and rely on delays in the judicial system to run the clock out. It will probably work, too.

Imagine that it is 1866, and you have been given the task of determining who should pay compensation to the freed slaves, regardless of practical issues and national boundaries. You would identify the parties that profited from slavery, right? The first among these would be the plantation owners, of course, but you would add a host of middlemen and textile manufacturers, most of them in the UK. Consumers throughout the world have benefited from the availability of cheap cotton clothes, but asking them to pay anything wouldn’t make much sense. The general population of the Union states, having endured the pain of the Civil War, would obviously be exempt.

It isn’t 1866, and you don’t have the luxury of disregarding practical issues and national boundaries. Both the criminals and the victims have long since left the scene. There is a lot of water under the bridge. What do you do?

The proponents of reparations argue that the federal government should pay, which, of course, means all American taxpayers. That means hundreds of millions of people who have no historical connection to slavery will have to pay the bill, including black people. Michael Jordan will be writing large checks to himself.

This is, of course, supremely illogical. It is, however, practical. By eliminating any clear tie to the descendants of the guilty parties, the fans of reparations make the program sound like just another federal program designed to address a social problem–not blood money for a crime. That approach is far more acceptable to people in my position who reject the notion of personal guilt for slavery.

Do administrative convenience and practical politics balance the program’s logical flaws? I leave that question to you.

I’ve written many times about the four GOP ideological factions and the four quadrants of the Democratic graph. How do the two fit together, and how is the picture changing?

As you might have guessed, the system as a whole consists of four groupings, as follows:

1. The Reactionaries, consisting of the Reactionary and CL factions of the GOP, make up 30-35 percent of the electorate. This is Trump’s base.
2. The Conservatives, consisting of the PBP faction and the few CDs that remain in the Republican Party, are about 15-20 percent of the electorate. These are the swing voters in November. Some will support Trump in recognition of his tax cut; others see him as dangerously incompetent, or worse. He needs virtually all of these votes to win.
3. The Liberals, otherwise known as the realo grouping of the Democrats, have about 30-35 percent of the electorate. This is Biden’s base. They hate Trump and support incremental change, but steer clear of socialism and political correctness.
4. The Social Democrats, also identified as the fundi grouping of Democrats, have 15-20 percent of the electorate. These are Sanders voters, and they are demanding radical change.

The most significant development of the last ten years or so has been the exodus of Conservatives to the Reactionaries and, to a lesser extent, to the Liberals. This movement to the right, due partly to the failures of the Bush administration and partly to blue victories in the culture war, has destabilized our system. Over the next ten years, you can probably expect a similar move to the left from the Democrats, mostly for demographic reasons. The Liberals and Conservatives may well find that they have more in common with each other than they do with the extreme elements of their respective parties.

What would that mean for the future? Europe provides us with a clue. More on that tomorrow.

Proponents of reparations tie wealth discrepancies to the effects of slavery, not the legal discrimination that followed during the next century. As a debating point, this is sensible, because it eliminates the need to deal with other kinds of discrimination that prevailed during the same period. But do the facts bear it out?

No. It is undoubtedly true that the former slaves had no property when they were freed in 1865. It is equally true, however, that tens of millions of immigrants who came to this country after 1865 carried their possessions in a suitcase, at most. Their success, relative to black people, in building wealth after their arrival cannot be attributed to that kind of a head start. It was undoubtedly due to the education and skills they had acquired before they immigrated.

The wealth gap is, therefore, partly attributable to an initial skills gap, but mostly to a significant difference in the degree and intensity of legal discrimination (i.e., discrimination against the Irish existed, but did not have the same effects as segregation) during the period between 1865 and 1965. A logical system of reparations consequently has to be based on the events that occurred during that period, or must focus on an outcome other than the wealth gap. The current proposal fails that test.

Like the Bolton book, the Mary Trump book fills in some details, but doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Trump is a supremely transparent person; he never stops telling us who he is and what he thinks. Here is the gist of it:

1. The universe is amoral and purposeless;
2. The world belongs to the strong, shrewd, and ruthless, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just stupid or sentimental;
3. Every human interaction has a winner and a loser; and
4. Winning is ultimately defined by fame, money, and power.

That’s it. Even Trump’s other notable flaws–his racism, for example–are far less important to him than being a “winner.” Nothing else really matters to him. Hence, the dangers to the nation that are attached to the outcome of the election in November. If he wins, we lose; if he loses, he will do his best to destroy the system that let it happen.

Life in the time of Trump.

Another statue falls.

The Civil War’s not over yet.

We’ll win this time, y’all.

He’s wrapped up in the rebel flag.

He’s even questioned NASCAR.

But some of his supporters say

It’s just a bridge too far.

At this point, it isn’t clear whether Donald Trump is running to be president of the United States or the Confederacy. That is a bridge too far even for some of his strongest supporters, including bootlicker-in-chief Lindsey Graham. Still, he persists.

Can the GOP as a whole avoid being tarred as the POD (Party of Davis) in future elections? I doubt it. The party is so completely identified with Trump at this point, it will have to live with all of the consequences, including that one.

Hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers died to put an end to slavery during the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded. Millions of people had their lives disrupted. It was the worst catastrophe our nation has ever experienced.

This doesn’t fit in the narrative of the proponents of reparations, so they just gloss over it. To them, American history is just an unbroken list of evil actions taken by white people against blacks. And so, they go straight from the crime of slavery to the failures of Reconstruction, with nothing meaningful in between. To the extent that the Civil War is addressed at all, it is treated as if it were some sort of natural disaster–a hurricane, perhaps.

Of all the weaknesses in the case for reparations, this one is the most annoying. The fact is that the original sin of slavery was, in fact, redeemed in blood. Logically, the argument for reparations should be based on what happened in the century that followed. I will address that in subsequent posts.

Even the leaders of the red team openly admit that they have lost the culture war. Still, Trump is doubling down in favor of the losing side. How can that make sense?

There are two things at play here. First, GOP voters are typically more motivated by culture war issues than the blue team, which tends to take its successes for granted. Think about guns, for example; every national poll shows strong support for gun control measures, and it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference, because the politicians know that only the red team comes out to vote on that issue. Second, the raw number of votes on a national basis is meaningless in a presidential election; what matters is the distribution of those votes. If Trump can win over a few thousand swing voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by putting himself on the wrong side of history, that could be enough to prevail in the election, regardless of his margin of defeat in New York and California.

I’m not saying this approach is destined to work; the electorate is likely to be swayed by the economy and the state of the pandemic, not the Confederate flag. One can’t completely dismiss the possibility, however.

The proponents of reparations have focused on wealth rather than income in their analysis, for three reasons. First, the differences between black and white people are stark, even within the same income groups; second, there is no remedy for these discrepancies in existing law, so a completely new approach would be required to resolve them; and third, since household wealth is accumulated over a period of many years, it inevitably puts most of the blame on our predecessors, not us. It is a politically shrewd decision. But is it logical?

The average working person relies on his income, not his wealth, in about 90 percent of his transactions. The obvious exception would be a large capital expenditure–typically, a house. The location of your house has a clear connection to the quality of education and economic opportunities. And so, the story here is mixed; the proposed connection to wealth does not reflect normal conditions, but is not irrational.

The commercials run by the various GOP candidates in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee don’t mention the pandemic. The recession doesn’t exist. No black lives are being taken by the police. Instead, we live in a world in which the radical left riots and loots for no reason other than they are simply bad people; they are abetted, of course, by Nancy Pelosi and the ubiquitous AOC.

You can see why these kinds of ads appeal to the base; there is no reason to move to the center during a primary. But what about the general election? Will we see more moderate commercials in September and October in an effort to win over swing voters?

All of these people are running as enthusiastic Trump accomplices, so I don’t think so. What you see now is what you will get. The entire party has bought into base mobilization/culture war politics. They will pay for it in the end.

During his Mt. Rushmore speech, Trump broadened his attack on the opponents of traditional American (i.e., Confederate) values to include advocates of cancel culture. My reactions are as follows:

1. The man who persistently identifies the MSM as “enemies of the people” and wants to change defamation laws as a supporter of liberal democracy and the First Amendment? Who is going to buy into that?
2. Cancel culture only has a minimal footprint in the Democratic Party. Joe Biden certainly isn’t a fan, and Bernie Sanders is a class, not culture, warrior. Ten years from now, this may become a serious issue, but not today.
3. As readers of this blog are aware, I have nothing but disdain for Twitter mobs, but they aren’t real mobs. Unlike Trump’s core supporters, they don’t have ropes and guns. All you have to do to avoid them is stay off social media. That’s easy enough; I do it every day.
4. Trump’s real issue is the structure of large social media companies as privately-owned and operated public spaces. He has half a point there. Sooner or later, Facebook in particular will either be broken up or regulated as a public utility, because Mark Zuckerberg cannot be trusted to determine what is and isn’t acceptable public discourse.