Month: July 2021

DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have thrown the reactionary base so much red meat over the last few months, it is suffering from indigestion. This includes: new, unnecessary vote suppression legislation; new rules prohibiting the teaching of CRT in Florida schools; legislation prohibiting transgender girls from participation in sports; a new law targeting censorship by big tech companies (already found unconstitutional by a federal judge); and executive action prohibiting businesses (including cruise lines) from refusing service to unvaccinated people. In fact, DeSantis appears to be more interested at this point in protecting the interests of the unvaccinated than in getting them vaccinated, undoubtedly because many of them are members of the base.

It would appear that DeSantis has his right wing completely covered. Will he learn from Trump’s example and move to the center? I’m guessing not. The right continues to believe that it can win national elections solely with the votes of a fully mobilized base. That will only happen if the GOP manages to change the voting rules far beyond its meager efforts to date.

According to the NYT, the Murdochs are working on a new Fox Weather Channel. Just what the world needs–angry, populist, right-wing weather! Culture wars between liberal low pressure systems and real American high pressure systems! Heat waves, fires, and monster hurricanes caused by hot air from the left, not fossil fuels! It will be great!

In light of this, I think NBC should replace Al Roker with Bob Dylan. Imagine it:

And it’s a hard

And it’s a hard

And it’s a hard

And it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain a-gonna fall!

Or:

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

After all, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

By all accounts, my prediction was correct; the Afghan central government is imploding, and the country is heading for a civil war involving the Taliban and several warlords. The two most important remaining questions about the situation are as follows:

1. Will the Pakistanis use their leverage? Once the “good” Taliban take power, they are likely to turn on their Pakistani allies, for whom they will have little further use. As of today, the Pakistanis still have some leverage. Will they use it to try and create a reasonable political settlement, or just celebrate a “victory” that will turn out to be worse than defeat?
2. Who gets Ghani? The central government will continue to exist on paper, and will control access to significant military and diplomatic assets. American aid will probably flow to the warlord with the best claim to be the heir to the elected regime. If I’m Ghani, I’m talking to the warlords and making the best deal available to me. If I’m a warlord, I want the legitimacy, money, and weapons he can bring to my side, so I’m willing to pay a pretty high price.

DeSantis probably doesn’t have the nerve to run against Trump. The best case scenario for him is that Trump bows out before 2023, most likely due to health or legal problems. Assuming, for purposes of argument, that no such deus ex machina comes to his rescue, what is the best way for DeSantis to nudge Trump away from the table?

The single best thing he can do is govern Florida competently, while insisting repeatedly that Trump is a worthy frontrunner and that he would never run against him. Being as obsequious as possible definitely helps. In the meantime, he can be raising money and creating valuable connections under the guise of running for re-election in 2022.

My suspicion is that Trump will not run again if very early polls show that he could lose in the primary. The key for DeSantis, then, is to leverage the funds and connections he generates during his re-election campaign into strong showings in these polls without looking like he is actually running for anything outside of Florida. That will be tricky, and it would have to be done quietly, but it is possible.

Ron DeSantis is running for president; he just doesn’t want Trump to find out about it and squash him like a bug. DeSantis made his political fortune riding on Trump’s coattails, and is usually viewed as being a clone of the man on golf cart. How do they actually stack up?

DeSantis has his own personality quirks; most notably, by all accounts, he doesn’t like people very much, so he delegates his public relations to his wife. (That doesn’t seem that strange to me) Otherwise, he is a much more attractive figure than Trump. He has an impressive academic background; unlike Trump, he understands the concept of public service; he is clearly qualified to be president; and he isn’t a complete narcissist, which means that, unlike Trump, the fear of being a loser won’t make him a danger to the republic.

Politically, DeSantis is more of a pure reactionary than Trump, who genuinely believes in the standard GOP line about tax cuts and deregulation. DeSantis is not wealthy, and has no business background; he doesn’t see Florida as his own closely-held LLC. He is willing to embrace causes that are popular on the left, such as environmental protection, if it assists him politically. He is also good at owning the libs, albeit not to the degree that Trump is.

Is it possible for DeSantis to nudge Trump out of the way without drawing Former Guy’s ire? For that, see my next post.

The GOP claims to be the party of the working man, but it is really the party of low wages, as evidenced by its passionate opposition to a higher minimum wage and unions. Further evidence was provided recently by GOP governors and legislators cutting off federal UI before the September deadline, even though it cost their states nothing. What is going on here?

Obviously, all of the GOP’s DNA is pro-business, not pro-labor. Higher wages mean, in many cases, lower profits for their donor class. The problem isn’t just with business, however; consumers benefit from low prices, and investors (often not business people) enjoy higher asset prices. Many of these people are elderly, a key support group for Republicans.

The bottom line is that there is a large constituency, not limited to business people, for low wages. Unless Biden manages to thread a needle, any successful efforts to increase wages are going to have negative impacts on other groups that vote in large numbers. I’m not sure the country is completely prepared to deal with that turn of events.

We are taught from an early age that we won our “freedom” during the American Revolution. What, exactly, does that mean?

For the patriots, it had two distinct and different meanings. For some, it was about self-determination; a new nation would chart its own course independent of Great Britain. This did not represent any kind of judgment about how the new nation’s powers would be organized and used. For others, the issue was limiting the power of the central government; the point of the war was to resist oppressive rule, not just to change the identity of the rulers.

The first group supported the ratification of the Constitution and, for the most part, would be Democrats today. The second group were Anti-Federalists and, for the most part, are Republicans determined to resist any increase in the powers of the federal government today.

You may not know that July 4 is not the birthday of the United States of America. The Declaration proclaims that the colonies are “free and independent states;” it does not say that they are united as a single independent country. That is undoubtedly why Jefferson did not base the argument for independence on the emergence of a new American nation separate from Britain, as one undoubtedly would do today, and Hamilton probably would have done even then.

The Declaration could have been the precursor to an “America” that was just a temporary military alliance of the states, or even less. The legal reality of the “United States of America” was first articulated in the Articles of Confederation. Without the Articles, each of the individual states would have been required to sign the Treaty of Paris as a separate combatant in 1783, which would have been absurd.

If you want to celebrate the birth of our nation, you will consequently have to wait until November. If you are satisfied with just celebrating the break with Great Britain, have a great July 4!

To a certain kind of reactionary, MLK is actually a hero. You’re laughing, but I’m completely serious. Hear me out.

As the narrative goes, slavery and de jure segregation were genuine evils that needed to be eliminated. MLK and his followers accomplished this, and are to be celebrated for it. As a result of their triumph, it was no longer necessary for the government to treat whites and minorities differently; every man is to be judged based on his ability and character, not the color of his skin. Today, it is the minorities who are the oppressors, by demanding special treatment from the government, and the white people who are oppressed by their demands and their persistent, but unfounded, cries of racism. In that sense, the true heir to King’s mantle is Donald Trump, with Lindsey Graham, the white man who refused to be silenced, in the role of Rosa Parks.

This is, of course, a total load of crap. Affirmative action programs are nowhere near as pervasive as reactionaries believe they are. All of the pertinent statistics show that blacks are far worse off than their supposed victims, which leads to some uncomfortable questions for reactionaries about why that should be the case. Finally, King’s interest in racial justice did not end with paper solutions to legal, political, and economic disparities between the condition of white and black people. After all, he was in Memphis trying to help with a garbage strike when he was assassinated.

In short, the attempt by reactionaries to appropriate the accomplishments and rhetoric of black civil rights leaders is a parody of the real article, and deserves to be treated with contempt.

There are two prongs to the battle, first, for LGBTQ rights, and now for transgender rights. The first is a legal/political fight to prohibit discrimination; the second is a more nebulous public relations campaign to establish that the group in question is “normal.” These are major issues in the culture wars, and have polarized the nation to a dangerous degree. Where do they stand, and where are they going?

The LGBTQ crowd turned its legal/political battle around and won it with stunning speed. In 2004, the GOP used anti-gay referenda to boost conservative turnout; today, protection for gay rights is a done deal, subject only to likely Christian carve-outs to be created by the Supreme Court. As to the “normal” question, it is hard to say, but based on the portrayals of LGBTQ people in the MSM, it is likely that they have made progress there, too.

The trans wars have, alas, just started. Given that trans people represent a tiny fraction of one percent of the population, the practical stakes in this one are pathetically low. The war is being waged by people on the left and right who simply can’t get enough of being culture warriors, and don’t know when to stop. The left wants to win a complete victory and plant its flag, figuratively speaking, on Mt. Suribachi again; the right currently sees the issue much as it did gay rights in 2004–opportunistically, as a vote mobilizer for other purposes. So far, conservatives seem to be prevailing, but, as with LGBTQ rights, it is early days.

Is there middle ground here that could prevent the country from cracking up over nothing? Yes! The left wins the legal/political battle on discrimination, but concedes the point on “normalization.” That is my position. I have accepted the left’s reasoning on discrimination; I have made my peace, for example, with gay marriage. But don’t ever expect me to embrace the sweeping new arguments made by trans people that there is no such thing as “normal,” that gender is a fluid concept beyond anyone’s moral judgment, and that I am just an unenlightened “cisgender” oppressor. That will never happen.

It is certainly trending that way, and you can see some evidence of conflict within the organization as a result. A few columnists have left the paper, complaining about young woke reporters. There was the dispute about the Tom Cotton “shoot the protesters” op-ed. And, of course, there is the 1619 Project (the ultimate woke icon), which the paper has promoted vigorously and uncritically over the objections of the right and plenty of commentators from the center.

Nevertheless, there is little to fear at this point. There is no evidence of wokeness in the news articles. Liberal columnists still predominate, if by a smaller margin. And the bottom line is that the paper has a readership that is too old, affluent, and white to embrace identity determinism. For the NYT to shift completely to the cultural left would be financial suicide.

If you enjoy the woke perspective, I recommend Vox. The liberal old guard there is gone (many to the NYT), and has been replaced by woke millennials. Reading their material on cultural issues can be an eye-opening, if not altogether pleasant, experience.

Three important legal developments announced yesterday:

1. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court set Bill Cosby free on the basis that the government had violated his due process rights by breaching an old agreement not to prosecute him. Cosby subsequently told the world that he was just another innocent black man who had been railroaded by a racist system. Umm. . . no. Nothing in this decision suggests the jury verdict was incorrect. In no way is this any kind of a vindication.
2. The Trump Organization is being charged with violations of criminal law in New York. The allegations apparently involve untaxed fringe benefits, not fraud. One has to assume that this is just a first step in an effort to bring a larger case against Trump himself, because the allegations, by themselves, look fairly trivial.
3. A federal judge has enjoined the enforcement of the new Florida law aimed at the big tech companies on the basis that it probably violates the First Amendment. Of course it does! The new law wasn’t actually intended to do anything except hurl a large chunk of red meat at the reactionary base.

As I’ve noted before, there is a fundamental difference between the American dream and the “Chinese dream” described by Xi. The former focuses on the ability of individuals to reach their full potential with the assistance of a limited, predictable state; the latter revolves around China becoming more politically and economically powerful, with each individual Chinese citizen enjoying a microscopic piece of that success.

That difference is one of America’s chief advantages in a soft power battle with the Chinese, because it is a model with a proven track record around much of the world. Its appeal is consequently universal. Chinese exceptionalism offers nothing to anyone except the Chinese.

To put it another way, when was the last time you read a story about desperate migrants from adjoining countries fleeing poverty and oppression to get into China? Never? Consider the issues at our border to be a backhanded compliment.

I will take credit, unhappily, for predicting the demise of Hong Kong as we knew it years before the event. I was wrong, however, when I suggested that the Chinese victory would be won with blood. What happened?

I think the answer is that the pro-democracy forces didn’t take the Hong Kong government seriously, but they genuinely (and correctly) fear Xi and the Communist Party. In addition, Xi guessed right when he concluded that the vast majority of Hong Kong residents would prioritize their economic well-being over a doomed fight for civil rights when push came to shove.

I can’t blame them, but I have to admit I’m slightly disappointed. In effect, the CCP is profiting from the atrocities of 1989.