Month: September 2021

Having won a narrow Electoral College victory in spite of a 7 million vote loss in the popular vote, Trump was in the mood for a victory lap. He withdrew all of the troops from Afghanistan over the objections of the military. The Afghan Army predictably collapsed within a few days.

When the generals told him that a Taliban parade in Kabul would make him look like a loser, he ordered air strikes. They were a complete failure. The situation was too far gone by that time, and there was no Afghan Army left to assist. Civilian casualties were heavy, however.

The evacuation was a fiasco. Trump blamed Obama and Bush, of course. The rest of the GOP fell into line and praised his courage for standing up to the Blob—even Tom Cotton and, inevitably, Lindsey Graham. His poll numbers did not budge.

They cut you off and blow exhaust in your face. They fly enormous Trump flags. They scream at you about masks. Yes, Reactionaries are not exactly shrinking violets.

Why? Because they think they have a divine right to impose their will on everyone else, they believe in toxic masculinity, and they feel threatened by their children and grandchildren. The future doesn’t belong to them; their objective is to lock in the past before it is too late.

In the end, they will fail, because time waits for no one. Just ask King Lear.

Populism has always been about mass distrust of the political establishment. What is emerging in America today is a lack of confidence in anyone, regardless of his profession, who looks like a member of the elite. Hence, the widespread preference for medicine for livestock over the vaccine in Trump states; even the family doctor is no longer above suspicion.

Why is this happening? Because the GOP has been putting out the anti-establishment message (even, absurdly, in states it controls) for years, and because it provides great economic opportunities for right-wing grifters. As Paul Krugman often notes, it is no coincidence that so many intellectual leaders of the GOP sell snake oil on the side.

The few remaining moderate Republicans have long worried that the overturning of Roe would be a poisoned chalice. Are they correct?

Probably not, except on the margins. It is true that prohibiting abortion will further alienate young people, and may drive up turnout a bit in midterm elections. Since the Trump years, however, it has been abundantly clear that the GOP is a reactionary organization run solely in the interests of old angry white Christians. Eliminating legal abortions won’t tell anyone anything that isn’t already blindingly obvious.

The GOP no longer has any interest in winning the support of a majority of Americans, anyway. It is putting its faith in the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and vote suppression.

Among the GOP politicians gloating over their victory in the Supreme Court were Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and South Dakota Governor Noem. You may remember that the former said that the elderly should be willing to die from the virus for the sake of the economy, and that the latter forcefully opposes mask and vaccine mandates and openly welcomed motorcyclists participating in a superspreader rally.

The hypocrisy here is so blatant that it is almost comical. Your initial reaction probably is that these folks value the lives of the unborn over those of the born. In reality, what they value is enforced chastity of the unmarried, not life.

The Fugitive Slave Act did as much as anything to generate opposition to slavery in the North. Among other things, it stacked the deck against black people, whether slaves or not, by denying jury trials, paying judges a higher fee for findings in favor of slave owners, creating dodgy affidavit requirements, refusing to hear testimony from the person in custody, and authorizing the payment of bounties.

The Texas abortion vigilante legislation resembles the FSA in several respects, and is about as pernicious. Will it suffer the same fate in the long run? One hopes so.

The great state of Texas—now completely under the control of the extreme right—decided to do away with abortion rights, while trying to immunize itself from a legal challenge, by putting enforcement of the new law purely in the hands of vigilantes. No state action, no remedy, is the clear plan. The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, is playing along, at least for now.

My thoughts on this are as follows;

1. If you really needed evidence that mask and vaccine-hating Reactionaries are faux libertarians, here it is.
2. There will be copycat legislation approved by numerous other red states within months, or even weeks.
3. Blue state residents are going to use the internet to offer assistance to Texas women who want abortions. Texas will try to use its regulations to permit civil actions against these non-residents. All legal hell will break loose at that point.
4. Blue states will retaliate by adopting extraterritorial legislation protecting abortion.
5. The right will regret the vigilante approach, because it can be used just as easily by the left against them on issues, for example, involving free speech.
6. The Supreme Court has just made a terrible, shortsighted decision that will tear the country apart. It would be better just to overturn Roe in the ordinary course of business and be done with it. Ratifying the vigilante concept, which relies on the state judiciary, as somehow being outside of the state action requirement, will lead to truly awful consequences.

Che Guevara reportedly broke with Fidel Castro after the Cuban Missile Crisis over the latter’s subservience to the wimpy revisionists running the USSR. Che left Cuba to spread the gospel of revolution all over the world. As we know, it didn’t end well either for Che or his cause.

I think we are going to see some of the same dynamic in Afghanistan. Some of the Taliban leadership will believe they have been called by God to make Afghanistan’s neighbors—most notably, Pakistan—Islamist. The Afghan government, however, will be reluctant to alienate Pakistan and China; its emphasis will be on building a medieval society in one country with any tools at its disposal. There will be conflict and confusion, with the pragmatists ultimately coming out on top, and the fundis ending up in the dustbin of history.

After the army of its ally collapsed, the great power was required to improvise an evacuation on very short notice. Despite some losses, it was a success. Over 100,000 people were evacuated in spite of the efforts of surrounding hostile forces.

Is it Dunkirk or Kabul? The first is viewed as a success and the second a failure—largely because the Taliban aren’t the Wehrmacht—but they have more in common than you might think at first glance.