Month: May 2021

Donald Trump has suggested that Ron DeSantis could be his running mate in 2024. If you were DeSantis, is this an offer you can refuse?

Heavens, yes! Consider what happens to him if he accepts. If Trump gets the nomination and loses, which is more probable than not, part of the blame will fall on his running mate. If Trump wins, DeSantis will be required to show infinite loyalty, while receiving nothing in return. He will also be stuck with Trump’s record, without having any meaningful influence on what it is, and will have to deal with eight years of Trump fatigue on the part of the voters.

Or, to put it more simply, having seen what happened to Mike Pence, would it really be a good idea to follow in his footsteps? Just say you’re too busy ruining, er, running Florida to consider taking the job.

In summary, here is a description of fascist America:

1. It begins when a GOP president, with the ultimate assistance of the right-leaning Supreme Court, uses an emergency as a pretext to override the Constitution and assume dictatorial powers.
2. Democratic leaders throughout the country are jailed, and the military, having been first purged of unreliable elements, occupies blue states.
3. Strict censorship is imposed. Religious tests are created for voting and officeholding. All left-leaning teachers and professors are fired.
4. Red states are permitted to govern themselves, subject to the above-described censorship and religious tests.
5. Business is required to accept more regulation, but is not nationalized. Unions are outlawed, and strikes are forbidden.
6. A list of reliable existing religions is compiled. All of them are tolerated and incorporated into the new tests. New and left-leaning religions are prohibited. After some debate within the regime, Jews are subjected to severe discrimination.
7. Blue states experience Reverse Reconstruction. They are ruled by a combination of military officials, carpetbaggers from red states, and collaborators. Elections and politics as usual disappear.

In short, fascist America is less like the highly centralized examples of the 1930s than an updated version of the Confederacy. Those people who actually took the advice and saved their Confederate dollars are thus finally rewarded.

None of this is inevitable, or even likely, but all of it is possible. They are the stakes of the Biden presidency.

Stat of the day: according to CNN, one out of every three new stores opened in America in 2021 will be a Dollar General.

That’s the economy the GOP system of regressive tax cuts and deregulation has given us. And now, for something completely different . . .

Yesterday’s jobs report was both surprising and disappointing, relative to the increased level of economic activity that has occurred over the last month. Republicans see it as evidence that the widespread stories are true: millions of minimum wage employees would rather collect enhanced unemployment compensation than go back to work. For once, they may be right. How big a problem is this?

I’m not overly concerned, because:

1. Part of the rationale for the enhanced benefits was to give employers an incentive to raise wages. The system is working as planned; the problem goes away if wages go up. The real issue here is that employers feel entitled to low wage labor, based on their experience over the last few decades. That is a choice in which all of society has a voice–not just them.
2. In any event, the issue goes away when the enhanced benefits disappear in a few months. At that point, we will know if there was any real basis to the lazy worker anecdotes.
3. Anyone who prefers temporary enhanced benefits to the security of a job is running a big risk that neither will be available when the benefits expire.
4. Unemployment is generally a proxy for misery. Today, it’s not. Is that such a bad thing?

In concept, for a fascist, the nation is the organism, and each individual (other than the leader, of course) is just an equally replaceable cell. Consequently, Mussolini started his political life as a socialist, and organized his Fascist Party along socialist lines. The Nazi Party, too, was nominally socialist. It set Hitler’s movement apart from the traditional conservative parties.

The reality, of course, was very different. Fascists value businessmen as a source of wealth and expertise, and fear them as a potential point of opposition. Fascist countries, therefore, typically embrace capital and repress labor. What about American fascists?

It would be the same story. Regressive tax cuts would be paired with a warning to shut up and dribble. Labor would be bamboozled with propaganda and nationalism. Business would find that deal acceptable, and life would go on more or less as before.

Paul Krugman can’t understand why Larry Summers would say that an increase in interest rates in response to an overheated economy would result in a recession. I haven’t read Summers, but I’m pretty sure the answer is that low interest rates are baked into the expectations of investors to the point where any significant increase can cause a “taper tantrum.” Substantial losses in the stock and bond markets will lead to a decline in discretionary spending among investors, which will cause a recession.

The theory is based in recent history and makes sense. Let’s hope it is never tested.

Yesterday, in our North Carolina community, there was a memorial service for two police officers killed in the line of duty. Thousands of people attended, including police representatives from three states. Prominent religious leaders spoke. The service was broadcast by at least two TV stations from a large city located about 100 miles away. It was a really, really big deal.

Yesterday, in any number of American cities, black teenagers who weren’t being paid to protect the public were shot and killed. Their deaths were barely noted on the local news.

All of these deaths were tragedies, but the public only cared about the police officers. The implicit assumption is that they matter far more than average citizens even though they, unlike most of us, are supported by the taxpayers and voluntarily assume the risks of their job. I don’t accept that. It’s just not right.

In a rigorously fascist regime, the relationship between the leader and the nation is viewed to be organic, so elections are unnecessary. But the model for American fascism is more the Confederacy than the Third Reich, so the issue is more complicated than you might initially think. Would there be elections in fascist America?

In red states, yes. With the religious tests and censorship in place, there would be room for some political debate.

In the blue states, no. Even with the tests, censorship, and the occupying army, the population would be viewed as being too unreliable for elections. Reverse Reconstruction would take decades.

Bret Stephens looks at Biden’s proposals to expand the welfare state and frets they will turn us into . . . France! Sure, it’s a great place to visit, with its cafes, museums, and all. But the French are miserable! They have high unemployment, lots of right-wing extremists, low growth, and an ineffective government. This is all due, of course, to the massive size of their welfare state, which we would be highly unwise to emulate.

Is any of this true? The relatively high unemployment figures probably have a slight nexus to the size of the welfare state, although they are more attributable to unnecessary, stifling labor regulations that are not really part of the safety net (see, e.g., Denmark). The rest of Stephens’ concerns either aren’t logically tied to the size of the welfare state or are common to other countries, including ours. So, by and large, the answer is no.

But there is a larger point here. Stephens appears to believe that national happiness is tied to chronic insecurity. With no welfare state, almost everyone is always a few small steps from destitution throughout their lives. The Stephens theory is that if everyone hustles every day out of a sense of perpetual desperation, high levels of growth and personal excellence ensue, and everyone is happy.

As the resident of a nation with a very limited safety net, does that sound right to you? Is the story of America over the last 40 years one of rising growth levels and increasing satisfaction with life and our political system? How willing to take risks is someone who lives on the edge of disaster? You know the answers to those questions only too well.

Fascist regimes typically offer big business a deal: business gets low taxes and protection from labor unrest and nationalization, but agrees to accept direction (some of it arbitrary) from the government, and to remain silent on political and social issues. Historically, the deal has been accepted, particularly if the threat from the left is viewed as being substantial and credible.

Does this sound familiar? It should. It is roughly where the Trumpist GOP is today.

American fascism would, of course, particularly impact the tech companies, of whom the right is extremely critical. Ironically, the imposition of government censorship of the left would resolve the free speech issues that currently bedevil Facebook and Twitter; they would consequently be free to pursue their business models without further interference from the government. The fascist government, having accomplished its objective of shutting off political debate, would have no incentive to break up the tech companies, which would probably be viewed as national champions in dealing with China and Europe. Censorship, however, would silence both outrage machines; the left would be outlawed, and the right would thus have no reason to exist. As a result, the social media companies would be forced to return to their original concept of uniting the world through cute cat videos, and their profits would be reduced accordingly.

Republicans claim to be terrified of cancel culture, but they are firm believers in it for their own purposes. It isn’t just attempts to prevent schools from using the 1619 Project as a teaching tool; now they are excommunicating anyone, including lifelong conservatives, who doesn’t profess to believe that Trump won the 2020 election.

The GOP is turning into an openly insurrectionist party before our eyes. The Democrats need to remind the electorate of this repeatedly in 2022 and 2024.

Sure, they might have been unsophisticated, but they were decent, unspoiled, freedom-loving people. When the time came, under the improbable leadership of a man with strong connections in the enemy camp, they rose up and annihilated the cruel, arrogant global elitist oppressors. They regained their freedom and lived happily ever after.

Is it the Germans under Arminius or American reactionaries under Trump? You decide.

Ross Douthat examines the thesis that Trump made progressives out of appalled centrists and finds it incomplete. Is he right?

Yes. To cite four examples:

1. On immigration, Trump’s first signature issue, there is no doubt that he galvanized moderate public opinion against him. He can therefore take “credit” for a significant shift in sentiment in favor of refugees.
2. For racial equity issues, on the other hand, the turning point came with the GOP’s appalling response to the election of Barack Obama. BLM had its origins in the Obama era. Trump threw salt in the wound, but he didn’t create it.
3. Realistically speaking, the development of the concepts of cancel culture and wokeness had little to do with Trump. These are ideas that are tied to millennials, left-wing intellectuals, and the internet, not Trump.
4. Millennial concerns about climate change and student debt similarly predate Trump. He just intensified them.

The bottom line is that the center has moved left partly due to circumstances beyond the control of any one individual (legitimate concerns about inequality and the adequacy of the welfare state; the pandemic; the availability of more or less free money) and partly due to the threat Trump and his party present to the workings of American liberal democracy. Centrists aren’t going to worry about the woke left as long as the Trump right appears to support the Orban Option.

If you’re Franco, and you lead a country that is culturally dominated by a state church, dealing with religious issues is relatively easy: you simply enforce the existing monopoly. Putin’s relationship with the Orthodox Church has some of the same characteristics. Mussolini made a deal with the Pope. But America has religious pluralism in its DNA. What would an American fascist government do?

Religious tests would be a key component of any American fascist regime, but it would have to allow for some diversity. In all likelihood, instead of creating a new state church, the regime would have to create a list of religious groups that it considered to be adequately respectable and obedient for the purpose of enforcing the test. New, unreliable churches and existing left-leaning organizations would be banned. Nevertheless, there would be some competition and some freedom of choice permitted, as in the Third Reich.

The most difficult question for the regime would revolve around the treatment of the Jews. Given that some Jewish groups are extremely conservative, but most are not, there would be some debate on this point. In the end, the intense antipathy felt by most reactionaries towards the Jews would probably prevail, so Judaism in its entirety would be banned.

For the GOP leader named Kevin

Herding all of those cats isn’t heaven.

His struggle with Liz

Is just part of the biz.

Is she running to be 47?