Month: June 2021

Republicans constantly warn us of the threat posed by the two heads of the Democratic monster: socialism and “political correctness,” by which they mean the woke cultural agenda. They treat the two heads as identical. Are they?

No. The cornerstone of socialism is economic determinism (i.e., your thoughts and behavior are driven by your economic class, which is established by your relationship to the means of production), while wokeness is a form of identity determinism (sex and race are all-important).

The two concepts are thus related, but fundamentally opposed, which is why Bernie Sanders had so much trouble appealing to black voters. Think of them as two sides of the same determinist coin.

All over America, woke warriors are talking about cancellations on social media, but red state governments are actually doing it! The usual target is the 1619 Project, of which I have been harshly critical in numerous posts. Leaving aside the rampant hypocrisy of the right, is it fair for state governments to prohibit its use?

No. The 1619 Project is incomplete and, in some ways, unfair. That does not make it valueless. While racism is not the predominant, let alone the only, theme in American history, it is undeniably important. The Project is helpful when it reminds us of racist actions that have not received adequate attention in our history books and which have consequences today. There is consequently nothing wrong with using it, albeit with a large helping of caution.

If you’re a liberal, you identify with the Union in the Civil War. You see America as an ever-evolving effort to create a genuine multi-racial liberal democracy, and the Union victory as an essential part of that ongoing struggle.

If you’re a reactionary, you identify with the Confederacy. You look around and conclude that the basics of your culture–God, guns, and guts–are under attack by a vicious group of leftists with numbers and history on their side. You think you are fighting for your very survival, because Fox News says so. The logic of the Confederate cause–to change the political rules in order to guarantee permanent economic and cultural primacy for an historically privileged minority–makes perfect sense to you.

If you’re woke, the Civil War is a short, meaningless interlude between the evils of slavery and the failures of Reconstruction, so you don’t identify with either side. As far as you’re concerned, Lincoln and Davis were both racists, so there is no fundamental difference between the two. All white Americans, regardless of where they came from or their circumstances in life, are oppressors of people of color. It doesn’t matter if you were a slaveowner or a Russian Jew fleeing a pogrom with nothing on your back–you’re all the same, because you received benefits from the racist system and thus have white privilege.

You can count me in the first group, thank you.

Threatening not to sign legislation that you really want unless you also get something else that you really want isn’t credible, because it is the political equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face–a tactic favored only by extremists on both sides. Fortunately, Biden quickly reversed course, and the bipartisan infrastructure bill is back on track, although it remains to be seen whether it can get 10 GOP votes in the Senate.

It actually makes far more sense, from a tactical perspective, to send the bipartisan bill through the system before the more sweeping partisan bill. That way, if it fails, it can be folded into a reconciliation bill, and the GOP will be denied any credit for any interest in infrastructure improvements or bipartisanship.

It occurred to me shortly after I posted on Iran and the Soviet Union that the tactical dispute between the Iranians and Al-Qaeda over the spread of Islamic political ideology resembles the battle between Stalin and Trotsky over “socialism in one country.” Stalin, and the Iranians, focused on building up and protecting the homeland; Trotsky, and Al-Qaeda, thought the battle could only be won in the end by taking on and defeating the enemy in its stronghold.

What does this mean? The obvious answer is that building a single state based on ideology is a lot easier than promoting world revolution, but that the ideology may be heavily corrupted in that process.

Pakistan’s double-dealing over Afghanistan drove four presidents from both political parties crazy. On the one hand, the Pakistani government made a legitimate effort to battle the “bad” domestic Taliban, and provided some useful assistance in Afghanistan; on the other hand, the Pakistani security services gave the “good” Afghan Taliban aid and a refuge from which they could never be dislodged. It was no accident that Osama was found and killed there; Pakistan was effectively the headquarters for the enemy forces in Afghanistan, and America could do nothing about it.

With the imminent withdrawal of American and NATO forces, the Pakistanis will have “won” the war, as their clients are bound to take power sooner or later. But be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it. The “good” Taliban in Afghanistan will undoubtedly assist the “bad” Taliban in Pakistan in its efforts to overthrow the elected government. And America, which is primarily concerned with restraining China in the region, is bound to tilt even more openly towards India.

Some victory! Pakistan is going to be even more of a Chinese client state than it is today, which, given China’s behavior towards Muslims, is going to be a bit embarrassing. China, for its part, will have to take more responsibility for an increasingly unstable neighbor with nuclear weapons and an ideology that doesn’t exactly mesh with theirs. Good luck with that, guys.

Racial and sexual identity completely determine thoughts and behavior. The world is divided into white male oppressors and people of color, who engage in a perpetual struggle that has historically been won by the whites. Truth is determined by power, but anything a member of an historically oppressed person says is presumptively correct, and anything a white person thinks or says is presumptively false, because it reflects his white privilege.

Racial and sexual identity are important, and oppression is a genuine historical fact whose impact is still felt today, but people are complex, and cannot be reduced to simple racial and sexual categories. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were white men, but they didn’t think in the same way.

All people are legally equal and should be treated that way, regardless of the past. Any form of oppression is long since dead and buried and is no longer relevant today. People of color, women, and sexual deviants use the past as a weapon to demand special treatment to which they are not entitled. Today, it is straight white people who are oppressed by the government, which incorrectly treats them as morons and bigots.

If you believe #1, you are woke. If you believe #2, you are a liberal. If your favorite narrative is #3, you are a reactionary.

(Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have come to the White House to discuss the filibuster and the progressive agenda. For once, Harris is not there; she’s at the border working on the immigration “crisis.”)

B: How are my favorite communists today?

S: Workers of the world, unite!

B: That’s the spirit! What can I do for you today?

W: We need to talk about the filibuster.

B: Ah, yes, the filibuster. It made more sense when people didn’t abuse it. I can remember the old days, when we were dealing with Strom and the boys. They were racists, but you could do business with them on other stuff as long as you didn’t cross their red lines.

S: It’s better not to romanticize those days. They were only great for white people.

B: I know. Still, in some respects, they were better. The Republicans weren’t nihilists back then. What do you want me to do?

W: You need to fight, Mr. President. Use the bully pulpit. Go on TV. Force Manchin and Sinema to change their positions.

B: Do you remember what happened when Barack went out in public on issues like this? It only made things worse. Why would things be different for me? Barack was a much better speaker than I am.

S: You can try talking to them privately.

B: I’ve already done that. For now, they’re dug in. They’re going to have to see a lot more GOP malarkey before they change their minds.

W: So where do we go from here?

B: It’s hard, but you’re going to have to be patient. Our system wasn’t designed to move fast. In some ways, you can be grateful for that. Imagine if the roadblocks hadn’t been in place during the Trump years.

S: True. We just need to get something going in the reasonably near future. I’m an old man, if you hadn’t noticed.

B: That makes two of us, if you hadn’t noticed. (They leave)

Calling Card: Foreign policy neoconservative.

Factions: CD (foreign policy); rest depends on the weather.

Prospects: Like Cruz, Rubio is an opportunist who desperately wants to be president. Unlike Cruz, he’s not personally obnoxious; he gets weak in the knees instead of coldly knifing people in the back.

Prediction: Pretender. Do you really think the MAGA crowd is going to support the man who talked about the size of Trump’s hands in 2016, and whose biggest “accomplishment” is an unsuccessful revolution in Venezuela?

Lenin, Trotsky, and the rest of the Bolsheviks did not initially believe that their regime could survive unless the revolution spread to the rest of Europe. When it became apparent that they were wrong, the regime’s overriding objective turned from promoting revolution to protecting itself. Socialism in one country inevitably evolved into a form of red fascism, with communists in other nations serving more as Soviet agents than active revolutionaries.

It occurred to me yesterday that the story of the Islamic Republic is very similar. Having failed to spread the revolution, the Republic keeps the cause alive by protecting itself. Iranian proxies in places like Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen are just that–they aren’t real revolutionaries.

Will the Iranian regime suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union? In the long run, given its domestic failures and lack of public support, probably. The regime is bound together, however, by an unusual combination of grubby economic self-interest and passionate belief in its divine right to rule. It will not fall until the leadership is divided and doubts its own legitimacy.

Calling Card: Authoritarian Trumpism.

Factions: PBP (Fiscal/Economy); Reactionary (Other Issues)

Prospects: Like Trump, and unlike some of his likely opponents, he is an orthodox Republican on regressive tax cuts and business deregulation. Unlike Trump, he is intelligent, competent, and single-minded. And where Trump just talked about shooting protesters, Cotton would do it.

Prediction: Contender. Cotton will be more acceptable to business interests than the pure populist DeSantis, and talking about shooting protesters will hit a sweet spot with the base. He’s not as good as some of the others at owning the libs, however. That could be his fatal flaw.

It is safe to predict that the Supreme Court will be creating plenty of new Christian carve-outs from civil rights legislation in the next few years. Woke warriors will be outraged, but will be unable to do anything about it. Will this reassure the right that the gulag is not just around the corner, and thus ease the pressure on our political system?

It’s possible. The real problem here is that there are too many people with a vested interest in stoking the culture wars. I don’t think things will improve until they start to understand what a dangerous game they are playing.

Calling Card: Trump, but better.

Faction: Reactionary

Prospects: More competent and less corrupt than Trump, but almost as flamboyantly reactionary, and with the proven ability to own the libs, he appears to be just what the base wants, if Trump doesn’t run.

Prediction: Contender. Barring unexpected events in Florida between now and 2024, he’s the frontrunner for the nomination.

The right is apparently predicting the Biden stagflation. Part of this is pure wishful thinking and opportunism, of course, but part of it is based on an analogy to the late 1970s. Is the analogy accurate?

No. The pandemic shortages and bottlenecks are a blip, not a permanent structural issue. The price of lumber, for example, is already falling. In addition, the world is a very different place than it was in 1979. Globalization, the internet, AI, and weak unions did not hold down prices back then.

So, to our great relief, Biden is not Jimmy Carter, and Trump is not Reagan, although you already knew that. The real inflation issue is whether the combination of the stimulus and higher wages (in part, driven by federal UI) would create higher inflation expectations, which would increase interest rates, which would cause a major market correction, which would result in a recession. So far, there is little evidence of that, but the possibility remains.

Calling Cards: Salute to 1/6 Rioters; Economic Populism

Faction: Reactionary

Prospects: His objective is to persuade the GOP electorate to abandon its longstanding alliance with business–the agreement at the core of the party–in favor of a purely Reactionary fiscal and economic agenda. This idea flies in the face of 40 years of history, the GOP Reagan myth, the self-interest of the donor class, and all of the institutions supporting the party. Can it be done?

Prediction: Pretender. The answer to the question is no. The institutional enforcers and the donor class will squash him like a bug.