Month: January 2022

When the British sent an embassy to the Chinese Emperor asking for trade rights and diplomatic equality in the 18th century, Qianlong swatted them away, saying that China was perfectly self-sufficient. As we all know, that didn’t end well for the Chinese. They have never gotten over the resulting conflict.

Xi’s ultimate objective is to create a China which, unlike Qianlong’s empire, actually is completely secure and self-sufficient. The overriding purpose of the New Silk Road is to create infrastructure, relationships, technology, and outposts which will eliminate any physical, military, or economic choke points for the Chinese economy.

Can it work? That, and how an invulnerable China would respond to the rest of the world, are the biggest geopolitical questions of the early 21st century. What I can say today is that it will be extremely difficult, but the Chinese have made a lot of progress, and the size of its market is a big asset.

Imagine a world without social media. It shouldn’t be that hard; you only have to go back about a decade. The traditional antagonists–the NYT and the WSJ, Fox and MSNBC–still exist, but Facebook and Twitter don’t. Is America still as polarized as it is today? Is liberal democracy still under threat?

No, for two reasons:

1. The cultural left that is so loathed and feared by the right expresses itself almost exclusively on social media. The right erroneously assumes that it speaks for the mainstream left, and overreacts by trying to maintain a monopoly of political power in an effort to save itself.
2. Social media are experienced through phones, and thus are more pervasive than periodicals and TV. People who were fairly sane in the old regime are bombarded with the opinions of nut jobs, and start to accept their opinions. Even partisan gatekeepers lose their authority. Anarchy results.

The bottom line is that uncensored social media are incompatible with liberal democracy. The current situation is unsustainable.

As I noted in a previous post, both Xi and Biden are attempting to reduce inequality by improving the lot of workers and cutting the fabulously wealthy down to size. In Biden’s case, he attempted to use the tools available to him in a liberal democracy–legislation–but to no avail. The BBB failed. The dollar store economy remains in place, mitigated somewhat by the pandemic relief bill.

Xi has very different tools available to him in a very different state. He is trying to spread the wealth by using the arbitrary power of the Chinese government to intimidate the wealthy, bring large companies under more rigorous state control, and force large “voluntary” charitable contributions for the public good.

Will Xi’s approach work better than Biden’s? I don’t think so. Apparently random efforts to interfere with the market, driven by politics, are no substitute for an adequate welfare state. They destroy essential incentives for business without assuring anyone that the proceeds of the ransom payments–er, voluntary contributions–will be used fairly and effectively.

Imagine no pandemic.

It isn’t hard to do.

No masks or distance.

The schools are open, too.

_____________

Imagine all the people

Getting the vaccine.

Yoo-hoo!

____________

You may say I’m a dreamer.

But I’m not the only one.

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one.

_______________

When the virus becomes endemic, the supply chain problems and inflation will ease, there will be no more disputes about masks and vaccines, and things will get back to something approximating normal. Won’t that be great!

It will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

John McWhorter is best known as being a severe critic of the illiberal (woke) left. Until recently, he had less concern about the antics of the reactionary right. DeSantis and the Florida Legislature, however, have changed his mind. Today, he is threatening a plague on both illiberal houses.

I agree, but if McWhorter thought the right was genuinely interested in protecting free speech, he was being painfully naive. Censorship is very much a part of the reactionary DNA. It always has been. Remember the battles over publications in small town libraries? What about the Index of Prohibited Books?

I hate to keep saying this, but it is worth repeating: the illiberalism of prominent GOP politicians is more dangerous than the ideas of woke teenagers on Twitter. People with guns and power matter more than people who don’t. That’s a matter of common sense.

The EU grew by about 4 percent last year. EU inflation is running about 5 percent. By comparison, we grew by over 5 percent, but inflation is 7 percent.

It would be completely fair to ask the American voters if they would prefer the EU cocktail of lower inflation and slower growth. Many of them would probably say yes, but most workers would not, if you explained that would mean lower wages and higher unemployment. That is the real choice on offer–not high growth and no inflation.

Over halfway through last night’s NBC News broadcast, Lester Holt announced that the American economy had grown over 5 percent in real terms last year–the highest rate since 1984. This, apparently, was a piece of throwaway news–an afterthought.

Mind you, this is NBC, not Fox. Stories about how we’re growing rapidly and living in more comfort than before don’t fit the prevailing Biden is a bozo and the Democrats are in disarray narratives, so they get little publicity, and Biden is subsequently blamed for being a bad salesman for his very real accomplishments. There hasn’t even been an attempt by the MSM to explain that the inflation we’re all bitching about is the result of a combination of Biden’s success in delivering that additional comfort and security and supply chain problems over which he has little or no control.

It’s very disheartening. One can only hope that the MSM are only driving down expectations, and plan to start a “comeback kid” narrative sometime later this year when inflation eases. My fear, of course, is we actually will get a new helping of false equivalence: sure, the GOP is the party of culture wars and violent insurrection, but the Democrats brought us inflation resulting from high growth, so what’s the difference?

As you would expect, a number of GOP establishment figures have accused Biden of appeasing Putin. You have to make a display of standing up to bullies to keep them under control, they say. Just think of Munich.

These are the same people who indulged Trump at every turn, who refuse to criticize the January 6 rioters and their accomplices, and who remain silent while Trump, Carlson, and the rest of the extreme right take Russia’s side in the dispute.

What’s that I smell? Could it be . . . the stench of hypocrisy?

Talk about commitment! The anti-vaxxers feel so strongly about their cause, they’re willing to die for it. Why?

For two reasons. The first is populist and “democratic”: elites of all sorts, including your doctor, are stupid, cynical, and self-interested, so you are better off trusting yourself and some guy you don’t even know on the internet who wants to sell you a useless product that supposedly cures the virus. The second revolves around the right-wing cult of strength and the rugged individual. As with climate change, there is no rugged individual solution to the pandemic, so the best way to deal with it is to operate as if it doesn’t exist. Get on with your life; if you die, you die heroically, as a free man and a patriot–not as a captive cowering in the basement.

According to today’s NYT, it is as I suspected: the Trump/Carlson right is supporting Russia, and the mainstream is refusing to speak against them.

Papering over the cracks isn’t going to work in the long run. Like January 6, Ukraine is going to be a significant issue during the GOP primaries, to say nothing of 2024.

Imagine that it is early November, and the outlook is poor for the Democrats. Inflation is still raging; the pandemic is still with us; and everyone is fed up. What should the party do?

When the GOP is in trouble, it doubles down on the culture wars even though its position does not command a majority of the population because it fires up the base in the states it needs most. Could the Democrats do the same thing with their base?

Absolutely! Start with January 6, right-wing censorship, support of anti-vaxxers, and abortion rights. That should do the trick. It may not win you the election, but it can certainly limit your losses.

Will Rogers once famously told the world he belonged to no organized political party–he was a Democrat. The MSM have loved that meme ever since. We are constantly told that the party is disunited and directionless. But is it true?

Let’s look at the record. Every major Biden initiative has passed the House, even though the Democrats have a microscopic majority. The pandemic relief bill and the infrastructure bill survived the Senate and became law. The BBB is opposed in its current form by two senators who are better described as independents; the 48 true Democrats support it. The voting rights legislation was supported by all 50 Democrats (real and nominal), but was stopped by the filibuster, because the two independents don’t want to change the Senate’s rules. Judicial appointments are mostly going smoothly, with the support of the independents and a few Republicans.

Does that sound like a party in disarray to you? The reality is that the party is surprisingly united, and the two senators who are holding up the rest of the agenda were never advertised as lobby fodder for the left. The problem is with the expectations, not the facts on the ground.

In a painfully transparent effort to distance themselves from the stench of Trump’s bromance with Putin, some GOP leaders are demanding that Biden unilaterally impose sanctions before any kind of invasion. This would eliminate any leverage we have to prevent the invasion and create serious rifts with our NATO allies, who clearly and reasonably want any punishment to fit the crime. It would thus accomplish much of what Putin wants without actually forcing him to go to the trouble of invading.

Is this just a more devious GOP gambit to make Russia great again? Or is it pure cynical opportunism aimed at the electorate? Both, perhaps?

Who is more dangerous: Trump or DeSantis? Here are my observations:

1. Trump is by far the weakest candidate the GOP could run in 2024. The election would be another referendum on him, which plays to the advantage of the Democrats, particularly if things aren’t going well.
2. President DeSantis would spend his entire term owning the libs and telling blue America he hates us, just like Trump.
3. In addition, he would be more likely, based on his record in Florida, to turn the GOP’s culture war complaints into enforceable legislation.
4. But there is no reason to believe that DeSantis has any great desire to overthrow the government to satisfy his wounded pride. Thus, he is the less dangerous candidate.

I am reading more and more articles which suggest that a significant part of the right has gravitated from Trump to DeSantis. You would expect Trump to respond with a flamethrower; after all, that’s what he does. Instead, he is papering over the rift. What does that mean?

It means he is genuinely fearful of DeSantis, and thinks appeasement (probably combined with some quiet backstabbing) has a better chance of success than open conflict.

Who is the more dangerous of the two potential candidates? For that, tune in tomorrow.