Month: January 2022

Both Poland and Hungary are illiberal states which increasingly resemble Putin’s Russia more than the rest of the EU. The critical difference between them is that, 1956 notwithstanding, Poland’s historical experience with the Russians has been far more dismal. That means Poland is much more dependent on the goodwill of the EU than Hungary is. Liberal democracy consequently has a better chance there than in Hungary.

Tsar Alexander I provided military muscle for the Holy Alliance, a group of despots determined to keep nationalists and liberals down after the fall of Napoleon. The USSR had the Brezhnev Doctrine, by which it claimed to have the right to keep Warsaw Pact countries as, effectively, socialist colonies. Is it then any surprise that Vladimir Putin is asserting his right to intervene to keep authoritarians in former USSR republics in power?

Of course not. The real question is which of the historical analogies is more appropriate. Putin’s autocracy looks more like the Russian Empire than the USSR to me, so I would say that he more closely resembles the Tsar.

To be fair, you could also say he looks like Theodore Roosevelt. The Putin Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine aren’t all that different.

You remember the Marlboro Man: the rugged, self-reliant cowboy. Thirty years ago, he was a nonpartisan figure. Today, he is clearly a Trump voter.

But should he be? Donald Trump is a bully and a whiner. He owes his position to his daddy’s money. He’s loyal to no one but himself. He’s about as far from the quiet, stoic cowboy ideal as you can get.

Given the conspicuous distance between Trump’s image and reality, it should be possible for the Democrats to win back at least some of the voters who think men should be strong, silent providers. Making an effort to find candidates who appear to fit the stereotype would help.

Historically speaking, populism is nowhere to be found in the Conservative Party’s DNA. In addition, the socio-economic forces against it are very strong, so the government’s objective to “level up” may well fail. For all that, however, BoJo seems sincere about helping the parts of the UK that have been left behind. The GOP, on the other hand, has never put forth any plan to help, say, Kentucky or West Virginia. Why the difference?

For two reasons. First of all, the donor class still calls the tune on economics in the GOP, which has concluded it can’t live without their money any more than it can live without the votes of reactionaries. Second, the GOP doesn’t actually have to help red states in order to win elections. At least until now, reactionary workers have not demanded tax and economic policies which operate in their interests; it has been enough to feed them with cultural resentment and nostalgia about strength and self-reliance. As a result, instead of generating and implementing plausible plans to help reeling red America, the GOP sticks it to blue America by limiting its tax deductions.

You could call it “levelling down.”

Bret Stephens thinks that a decade of artificially low interest rates has led to asset inflation, and that the Fed will cause a nasty recession by raising rates in response to the current wave of inflation. Is he right?

Yes and no. Consider the following:

1. Interest rates over the last decade were not artificially low; they reflected a period of unusually low inflation, which was caused by all of the factors I call the dollar store economy: globalization; technological change; free trade; loss of union power; and regressive tax cuts. Why would you increase rates when you can’t even meet your inflation targets?
2. On a similar note, asset inflation was caused less by low rates than by the lack of other investment opportunities in the dollar store economy.
3. But I worry that Stephens is right about the Fed causing a recession by raising rates in 2022. I have argued on several occasions that the current economy is hooked on low rates. Both the stock and the bond markets will tumble if rates go up, and the cost of financing the government will increase significantly. That is why it is important for the Fed to avoid overreacting to today’s inflation; it should rely more on rhetoric than action in order to prevent an unnecessary recession.

Under normal conditions, unemployment is a proxy for misery, and is caused by a shortfall in demand. Under today’s pandemic conditions, neither of these things is true. The federal stimulus and enhanced unemployment benefits gave workers a savings cushion, and thus permitted them to hold out for better jobs, and there is no shortfall in demand for goods, as evidenced by inflation and supply chain problems.

If the pandemic were to disappear tomorrow, it is likely that millions of people who have left the job market for covid-related reasons would rejoin the workforce; as a result, the number of new jobs would skyrocket, and GDP would increase significantly, but the unemployment rate would remain about the same. Unfortunately, however, the pandemic is not going to disappear any time soon. So what should the Fed do?

The Fed is correct to view the current state of affairs as full employment, the new job numbers notwithstanding, so additional stimulus is unnecessary. Raising interest rates, however, will neither resolve supply chain problems nor cool off the demand for goods, which is being fueled by excess savings, not credit. All it will do is drive the markets down and add to the pain of the pandemic. The correct course of action is to rely on symbolism, rhetoric, and patience rather than large rate increases to fight inflation.

We remember the riot last year.

The far right trampled what we hold dear.

They were only a mob;

Didn’t finish the job.

Is the end of democracy near?

It was a political act, inspired by the head of state, and aided by large numbers of representatives from a single political party. It was not a natural disaster. What do you expect the Democrats to do?

Kyle Rittenhouse is a GOP icon. He killed two men and wounded a third at a violent demonstration because he stood with property owners and police officers and justifiably thought his life was in danger. He’s our kind of guy!

The police officer who killed Ashli Babbitt similarly used a gun on a violent, but unarmed woman who appeared to threaten the lives of members of Congress and those who protected them. And yet, that officer, unlike Rittenhouse, is viewed as a tool of tyranny, and Babbitt is viewed as a martyr by the extreme right. Why?

Because the righteousness of the political/cultural right is always taken as a given, so the facts are unimportant. The narrative must always prevail over reality. That is the way the reactionary right operates. It is only getting worse.

The Trumpists have thrown out a variety of theories behind the riot, including the following:

1. The rioters were patriots whose violence was totally justifiable, as they were trying to stop Congress from ratifying the results of a stolen election;
2. The rioters were actually antifa, as no self-respecting right-winger would kill a police officer;
3. The rioters really didn’t do that much damage–they were actually tourists; and
4. The rioters were peaceful until they were provoked by violent police officers. Think Chicago 1968, except the martyrs were reactionaries.

These theories are mostly mutually exclusive, but they have one thing in common: they get Donald Trump and his GOP allies off the hook.

Mitch McConnell denounced the rioters in no uncertain terms, so he can’t rely on any of the Trumpist rationales. Keeping the votes of the Trumpists, however, is his overriding objective (far more important than saving American liberal democracy), so what he can say?

For McConnell, January 6 is a political tornado–a natural disaster whose causes cannot be analyzed and explained. Any attempt to fix blame is consequently counterproductive, and inevitably partisan. Just shut up and move on.

It sounds a lot like the authors of the 1619 Project talking about the Civil War.

As I’ve noted before, Marxism and the more extreme expressions of wokeness are two sides of the same coin; the first is based on economic determinism, while the latter is a form of identity determinism. Large segments of the right ignore the fundamental difference between the two and insist on calling wokeness a form of Marxism. Are they correct?

No, because the practical implications of the two are completely different. Marxism works best as a kind of religion, but it has clear political consequences. If you truly believe in it, you think that iron laws of history require revolutions, and that the end game is a classless society which resembles nothing so much as the Garden of Eden. Wokeness has no origin story, no pseudo-scientific explanation for the workings of the world, and no utopia at the end. To the extent that it contains any kind of vision for the future, it is just an incrementally improved version of liberal democracy. It can thus operate perfectly well within the framework created by the Founding Fathers–unlike, say, the theocracy that is the dream of religious reactionaries.

Three of the four GOP factions–the CLs, CDs, and PBPs–find the events of January 6 to be totally deplorable. Only the Reactionaries defend the rioters. And yet, the orthodox GOP position is that the riot was either justified, was caused by antifa, or wasn’t a big deal; anyone who openly disagrees is treated as a heretic and cast into darkness. How can this be explained?

It means that: the Reactionaries currently have more clout within the party than the rest of the factions combined; the focus of the right during the next presidential campaign will be on destroying liberal democracy and fighting culture wars, not tax cuts and deregulation; and the real question in the next GOP administration will be the extent to which the powers of the federal government will be used to limit the First Amendment rights of the left.

Well, of course he did! Why wouldn’t he? Orban isn’t just a role model–he could be the newest and most exciting member of the S6! After all, somebody has to replace Duterte.

Of course, that could be Bolsonaro, if he manages to stay in power by hook or by crook. Time will tell.

There is a good reason why Donald Trump is the only president in American history to be impeached twice; he had no respect for law or the norms of liberal democracy. The blue team kept thinking that would bring him down, but it didn’t; the reason, in a nutshell, is that his base wants him to blow up the system, and viewed allegations of corruption as evidence that Trump, unlike any of his predecessors, was keeping faith with them. They also argued that America knew perfectly well what Trump was when he was elected, so he was entitled to a free pass. But what about the other possible GOP nominees? Will they get similar treatment just because they also believe in owning the libs?

I’m not sure about this one, but my best guess is that Trump is sui generis when it comes to corruption. I think the other potential GOP contenders will be judged by the standards of conventional morality by the base and the general public, particularly when they are pitted against each other.

We know from bitter experience that Donald Trump has no vision for improving the lives of the American people. Policy simply doesn’t interest him. The only plausible rationales for a Trump candidacy in 2024 are to avenge his defeat and finish destroying liberal democracy in America. And that is precisely what he will do if he is elected.

Given Trump’s obsession with the supposedly rigged 2020 election, the outcome of a rematch with Biden will either be an undisputed Trump victory or a constitutional crisis. But what if he doesn’t run? Is a constitutional crisis inevitable if, say, DeSantis is the GOP nominee?

It is a given at this point that the GOP nominee in 2024, regardless of who it is, will be a ferocious reactionary. That, in and of itself, does not dictate that 2024 will end in blood; it will depend on the attitude of the individual. The thing to worry about here is that Trump has already created the road map for overturning the election results. It is possible that the process will work more or less on autopilot at the state level regardless of the behavior of the nominee.