Month: January 2023

If you do a survey of Russian military history from the Napoleonic Wars to the present, this is what you find:

1. It is quite common for the Russians to fight ineptly in the first stages of conflict;
2. Their performance tends to improve over time;
3. They do their best fighting on their home turf; and
4. They usually rely on manpower advantages, geography, and weather to overcome technological and tactical inferiority.

The conflict that is the most analogous to the Ukraine War during this timeframe, in my opinion, was the Crimean War, which was initially an imperialist adventure against the Turks, but ended as a war primarily against France and England, the two predominant European powers, in an area that is now claimed by both Ukraine and Russia. As we know, that war didn’t end well for the Russians.

The analogy to the current war is not perfect. NATO is not sending troops to fight directly with the Russians. Nevertheless, if you’re Putin, it should worry you, because if you insist it is an existential conflict, what happens if you lose?

A few weeks ago, I predicted that DeSantis would be looking for a face-saving way out of his dispute with Disney. The Hungarian Candidate will need the support of business to win the presidency; trampling on the free speech and property rights of a large (and much-loved) company isn’t exactly a good way to get it. Just make a deal and move on.

I was wrong. If my understanding of DeSantis’ new proposed legislation is correct, he has decided not to abolish the Reedy Creek Improvement District, but to put his appointees in charge of it. In effect, he’s telling Disney that he’s going to be running their Florida theme park.

If this is a serious proposal, and not just an opening bid, it isn’t going to end well for DeSantis. There are lots of Republicans out there for business to support. Why would they pick one who wants to boss them around?

Bolsonaro has reportedly moved into a rented house near Orlando. Well, of course he has. Every obnoxious domestic right-wing extremist already lives in Florida; why not open it up to tropical strongmen, too?

Look out Budapest–we’re coming for your crown!

I predict that Bolsonaro and thousands of his wealthy friends will stay beyond their legal right to do so and will become, in effect, illegal immigrants. Trump and DeSantis, who have zero compassion for poor, desperate women and children from Central America, will defend their right to be here, calling them true political asylum seekers. After all, they’re only illegal immigrants if they don’t agree with you.

If Marx was right about how history repeats itself, and the first event was a farce, doesn’t that mean the second event must be an even bigger farce? Based on today’s events in Brazil, the answer appears to be yes.

The January 6 wannabe insurrection had no reasonable chance of success without some extensive previous coordination with friendly elements of the military, but at least it took place with Congress was in session and doing something politically significant. The rioters in Brazil, however, attacked the office of the president when he wasn’t there, and invaded the legislative building when the legislature wasn’t in session. Their big accomplishment was to get on TV and damage some public property. What was the point of that?

Abortion is a wedge issue in today’s GOP, and federal abortion legislation isn’t going anywhere in the Senate, so even the most extreme GOP House members would be wise not to bring it up. The House is under the effective control of the Chaos Caucus, however, and nothing excites the base more than the abortion issue. In light of that, what happens next?

I think the base can be appeased in the short run with a wave of highly publicized, bogus investigations of Biden’s family and government, so I don’t think the issue will come up immediately. I suspect it will be a hot topic, however, before the end of the year.

Probably right after the Chaos Caucus votes to default on the debt.

My readers will know that I’m not generally an optimist by nature, so why am I so confident that inflation will ease this year? The answer lies in history.

The economic dislocations and resulting inflation caused by the pandemic look a lot like the adjustments required after the two world wars. The record shows that prices soared after both wars, as controls were lifted, production shifted back from military to consumer goods, and suppressed demand (fueled by excess wartime savings) was satisfied. In both cases, the rate of inflation returned to something far more normal after two years.

If the two-year rule holds, and I believe it will, 2023 should be the year the fever breaks.

I haven’t read any of Benedict’s writings, so I obviously can’t claim to be an expert on his thinking. The laudatory columns from people such as Sohrab Ahmari, however, have made it clear that Benedict supported the Thomist approach of marrying reason to Catholic dogma against prominent 13th and 14th Catholic theologians. You would have thought those battles were over several centuries ago, but apparently not. Which leads to the obvious question: how logical and empirically sound is Catholic doctrine?

Let’s examine the record, which includes the following:

1. While the story of the creation of the universe in Genesis is arguably consistent with the available empirical evidence, the part about the creation and fall of man is not. The religious implications of the relationship between humans and animals have never been addressed in any satisfactory way by Benedict or any other Christian theologian.
2. The Bible then goes on to identify the Jews as God’s chosen people, to discuss other civilizations in the Middle East only as foils for the Jews, and to completely ignore all of the other great civilizations in the world, which makes no sense whatsoever if you’re trying to make sense of the human experience.
3. The God of the Old Testament is about as far from a philosopher’s God as possible; he’s basically a capricious tyrant–more like Zeus than Jesus.
4. After millennia of human history, God then changes the rules, decides the Jews aren’t really the chosen people anymore, and sends his son into the world. I guess the people before him didn’t really count.
5. The Christian God is, of course, three parts somehow magically woven into one. The Holy Spirit part is ill-defined; why it even exists as sort of an independent manifestation of God is hardly clear to me.
6. Jesus is both completely man and completely God. He dies on the cross, even though God by definition is immortal, and then is resurrected by God, even though, as God, he could have resurrected himself. Try finding the logic in that; as I understand it, even Aquinas couldn’t do it.
7. Rome becomes the center of the Christian universe solely by virtue of the fact that it was the capital of a powerful pagan entity–the Roman Empire.
8. Catholics engage in clerical politics for centuries. Oceans of blood are shed over minor doctrinal differences. Historical practices and accidents (e.g., the use of Latin and clerical celibacy) somehow turn into the word of God. Priests magically gain the power to turn wine into the blood of Christ. Popes openly deny and suppress scientific discoveries. The world moves on, leaving the Church behind.

That doesn’t sound like a very “reasonable” religion to me.

McCarthy has now succeeded, through appeasement, in peeling off votes from the dissidents who have demanded the right to run the asylum. Now he has to get a few more votes from the handful of people who despise him. Will he succeed in flipping them? I don’t know, and I don’t really care.

The message here is that the extremists are still driving the train, because the few GOP moderates value party unity over effective and responsible government. When presented with McCarthy’s appeasement plan, they did nothing to stop it. That means you can also expect them to fall into line when the “burn it down” crowd refuses to lift the debt ceiling. One hopes the president has taken note and is prepared to deal with it.

The bottom line is that the insurrectionists failed to retain control of the executive branch on 1/6/21, but they are now effectively in charge of the House of Representatives. This conflict is like the Civil War; instead of going away, it just manifests itself in a different way.

At first glance, you would think that Trump would be supporting one of the extremists, not McCarthy. After all, McCarthy said some pretty harsh things about him after January 6, and Trump is not a man to forgive and forget. How do we explain the apparently inexplicable?

Trump believes true loyalty is the product of power and fear, not love and common goals. He, like everyone else, knows he has McCarthy’s balls in his pocket. In that sense, McCarthy is a better bet than even, say, Matt Gaetz.

Joe and Dr. Jill are having dinner in the White House when the subject of his re-election campaign comes up.

JILL: Joe, I know you don’t want to discuss this, but it’s time to deal with the elephant in the room.

JOE: But there hasn’t been an elephant in this room since I won in 2020.

JILL: At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor, but you know what I mean. The re-election campaign.

JOE: Oh, that.

JILL: You know I’ll support you, no matter what you do. But you need to take a hard look at whether it makes sense to run again.

JOE: OK. Give me the pros and cons.

JILL: I’ll start with the pros.

JOE: I always prefer to start with the good news. Go on.

JILL: First of all, you have a very good record, regardless of what the Republicans say. Unemployment is very low. The deficit has been reduced dramatically. Inflation is coming down. The markets are doing OK. Gas prices have stabilized. We’ve made important progress on climate change and infrastructure. Your administration has been stable and totally clean. We’re doing well in Ukraine. What’s not to like?

JOE: I agree, of course.

JILL: And things could be looking significantly better in two years, particularly on inflation. Compare that to the clown car that we know the GOP House will be. And Trump, of course. The party will be united behind you and determined to stop the madness in its tracks.

JOE: I think I’m entitled to that, under the circumstances.

JILL: Above all, Trump will be an even more diminished figure than he is today after the primaries, and you already know how to beat him. As a white guy, you’re ideally placed to do that. Just give him the limelight and let him self-destruct. You know he’ll do it. He can’t help it. It’s who he is.

JOE: Why do I have the feeling that there’s a “but” coming in here?

JILL: The “but” is you probably won’t be running against Trump. You’ll be running against DeSantis. Most of the rope-a-dope stuff you did with Trump won’t work against him. You won’t have January 6 on your side. And he’s fresh and young. He’ll have all the energy in the world to run around the country and complain about wokeness, and you won’t be able to respond. You’ll stand next to him on a debate stage and look really old. It’s a disaster in the making.

JOE: But if I don’t run, who can beat DeSantis? Bernie?

JILL: Bernie’s too old, too. I think he knows that. Besides, the Democratic electorate is too smart to pick him even if he does run. Give them credit for being able to pick winners. They did pick you, after all.

JOE: Then who?

JILL: We have lots of qualified candidates. Don’t worry about that.

JOE: Anything else?

JILL: It’s a lesser point, but if you don’t run, the Republicans will be less likely to beat up on Hunter. He doesn’t need that, and neither do we.

JOE: True.

JILL: So, what do you think?

JOE: I’ll think about it.

He broke from hundreds of years of precedent (a most unconservative thing to do) and retired when he could no longer do the job. My guess is that the new precedent will become the general practice as time goes on.

Benedict as a successful radical reformer! Who would have imagined it?

The relatively reasonable GOP House members have tried both appeasement and empty threats with the “burn it down” holdouts, to no avail. It’s time for something that would actually work. They should identify someone the Democrats can trust and offer him up in exchange for Democratic votes.

Yes, that would divide the GOP, but the events of the last two days have shown that the party is already fundamentally at odds with itself. It would be a step towards proving that the GOP is responsible and capable of actually governing. It would be an act of patriotism at a time when we could really use one.

The other thing worth noting here is that Trump’s open and forceful endorsement of McCarthy this morning got him exactly zero additional votes. That tells you that burning it down has taken on a life of its own; Trump no longer has effective control of this caucus.

Like the Catholic Church, which it resembles more than either would like, the Communist Party maintains that it has a monopoly on the truth. When Stalin turned on his fellow Old Bolsheviks, therefore, they had nowhere to go. They had to be wrong, or their entire lives as prominent members of an infallible organization were a lie, but how? In the end, they were liquidated with minimal fuss, because they weren’t capable of meaningful resistance.

Catholic reactionaries managed to avoid that dilemma as long as Benedict was alive, because they could tell themselves that he was the real pope, and Francis was just a usurper. The obvious historical analogy there was to the 18th century Jacobites. But what do they do now? If they do battle with Francis, they are effectively making themselves a kind of right-wing Protestant. If they don’t, his bright blue papacy could change their beloved Church beyond recognition. It’s a serious dilemma.

I would feel sorry for them if they weren’t determined to impose their values on me, liberal democracy be damned. I’m not interested in living in a theocracy. I’m guessing you aren’t, either.

Most of the GOP leadership is, and has been, convinced that the Republican Party cannot win elections without the support of the extreme right. Nobody exemplifies that more than Kevin McCarthy, who made it clear that he would let the extremists, not the moderates, drive the train during the first two years of Biden’s term in order to maintain party unity. Today, he’s getting his reward. The extremists know he’s a pander bear, not a true believer, so some of them won’t vote for him no matter what he promises them.

Extremists cost the GOP both the 2020 and 2022 elections. Today, they are making the party look like the clown car that is truly is. At what point will the mainstream figure out that a divorce is necessary? Will it be today?

I’m guessing not. The immediate issue will be finessed somehow, and the problem will linger through the 2024 election.

If you ask a reactionary why he gets so worked up about illegal immigration, you are likely to get two responses. Let’s analyze them:

1. THEY TAKE JOBS AWAY FROM REAL AMERICANS AND DEPRESS WAGES: Most of the numerous studies on this subject don’t support that argument, even under historically normal conditions. Today, we have a labor shortage, which has resulted in inflation and declining real wages for many “real Americans”, so the argument has no validity whatsoever.
2. THEY ARE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT THAN WE ARE, AND THEY WILL SWAMP OUR CULTURE: As the Democrats have learned to their cost over the last two elections, Hispanics are not culturally monolithic. However, as a generalization, it is fair to say that they are socially conservative but believe government should play a large role in improving the lot of its citizens. That is exactly what reactionaries believe, as well. In addition, some parts of Hispanic culture have become embedded in ours, as well. The clear us and them distinction made by reactionaries consequently makes little sense.

The bottom line here is that the purported rationales aren’t very compelling. That leaves you with racism and the annoying sound (to Americans) of spoken Spanish. Those, I’m afraid, are what really motivate most reactionaries.