Month: March 2023

Zhou Enlai famously said in the 1970s that it was too early to judge the impacts of the French Revolution. There is a dispute about the context of that statement, but you get the point. We need some distance to gain perspective.

The Iraq War, along with the Great Recession and the election of a black president, poisoned American politics by discrediting the CDs and turning the GOP into a reactionary sandbox. But what about Iraq?

Prior to the war, Iraq was a brutal military dictatorship run for the benefit of the Sunni minority. Today, it is Lebanon with oil; the parties are sectarian, Iran has way too much influence, militias rule the streets, and the government just funnels jobs and money to the well-connected in order to keep the peace. Demands for competent government have all come to a dead end. Climate change and the declining value of oil will only make matters worse. There is more freedom than there was under Saddam, but very little hope here.

My prediction is as it was–the power vacuum will ultimately be filled by the military. Iraq will end up where it was, only this time, the Shiites will rule.

Jamelle Bouie insists that Ron DeSantis has more in common with George W. Bush than with Trump. Is he right?

The two do have something in common: the ability to walk a tightrope between the GOP establishment and the right-wing populists. Bush, given his family connections, was always going to have access to the establishment, but he made every effort to show his disdain for it, particularly by embracing evangelical religious views. DeSantis uses his elite educational background to show his competence, but insists that he didn’t inhale. Trump supporters, of course, are not so sure.

But, on balance, Bouie is wrong. Bush might have used public opposition to gay rights to get re-elected in 2004, but culture wars were a lower case issue during his presidency. He campaigned as a “compassionate conservative,” and there is every reason to believe he meant it. 9/11 and the Iraq War changed the character of his presidency irrevocably. But for those events, he probably would have been viewed by the history books as a uniter.

DeSantis is anything but a uniter. Like Trump, he tells blue people that he hates them all the time. Culture wars are his brand. You can’t really say that about Bush.

It’s hard to defend hush money payments to a porn star that almost certainly had an impact on the 2016 election, so the Republicans aren’t really trying. Instead, they are arguing that the legal violations are too insignficant, and too remote in time, to warrant the prosecution of a former president. In effect, they maintain that something like the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standards for impeachment in the Constitution should be applied to criminal actions against Trump for the years before he took office.

If you accept the validity of the argument, shouldn’t it also apply to Hunter Biden? How did his grifting during the Obama years represent an ongoing threat to the republic?

The supply chain problems have been resolved. Spending on goods relative to services has been reduced to normal levels. Gas prices are under control. Labor shortages still exist, due to limited immigration and retirements, but wage increases are running pretty close to the inflation rate. Inflation is down, therefore, but not as much as you might have hoped. Why?

Mostly because affluent consumers with robust pandemic savings and healthy home and 401(k) values are less resistant to price increases than many companies had previously anticipated. The businesses are continuing to raise prices to boost profits. The tradeoff between increased profits per sales item and lost less affluent consumers is apparently worth it. At least for now; are you really going to buy an ordinary car that costs $50,000?

The Trump tax cuts, like the Bush tax cuts before them, were supposed to lead to an explosion of investment and growth. Like the Bush tax cuts, they did no such thing; they resulted in more inequality, an increase in affluent consumer spending, massive investment in government securities to finance the higher deficit (i.e., “right-wing recycling”), and asset inflation. The GOP will, however, insist on more tax cuts the next time it wins a national election. It refuses to learn from history for reasons of self-interest.

When progressives demanded an increase in the minimum wage to $15, I argued that it would lead to lower business service levels and inflation, because business owners would protect their profits and pass the costs to consumers. When the pandemic created a labor shortage and effectively increased the minimum wage, that’s exactly what happened. And yet, today, some progressives are arguing for a $20 minimum wage to help workers deal with. . . you guessed it . . . the inflation that was partially caused by rising wages.

It seems that the right is not alone in its refusal to learn from the past.

Having wisely repudiated his earlier passionate support of Social Security and Medicare cuts in order to pander to the base, DeSantis has now turned his flip-flopping eyes to Ukraine. About a week ago, he described the Ukraine war as a “territorial dispute” that was of little interest to the United States and declined to criticize Russian aggression, but now he says Putin is a “war criminal” who should be held accountable for his crimes by someone. Just not us.

As far as I can tell, the new DeSantis position is that America should cheer for Ukraine but leave it to face the Russian onslaught without any material assistance. Will that satisfy Tucker Carlson, to say nothing of the mainstream of the GOP? Probably not.

Fortunately for DeSantis, he clearly has Rupert Murdoch in his corner, so Carlson may have to keep his mouth shut.

The concept of wokeness revolves around racial and sexual identity, so it isn’t obvious, on first glance, why it would have any relationship to the size of the welfare state. Reactionaries, however, firmly believe that minorities benefit disproportionately from the welfare state, so an attempt is being made by some opportunistic politicians to link federal spending to wokeness. Will it work?

Only to a limited extent. At some point, narrative has to give way to reality. White reactionaries benefit hugely from federal programs, and blue states are net contributors to the welfare state.

I’ve read any number of articles about depressed younger people over the last few weeks. The given reason for this phenomenon is the appalling state of the world today. But is it true?

Let’s compare the plight of Gen Z to my own experience:

1. EXISTENTIAL THREAT: Gen Z–Climate change; Me–Russian nukes.
2. LOST WAR: Gen Z–Iraq and Afghanistan; Me–Vietnam.
3. POLITICAL CRISIS: Gen Z–Trump and January 6; Me–Watergate.
4. APPARENT AMERICAN DECLINE: Gen Z–Yes; Me–Yes.
5. RACIST EPISODES: Gen Z–Police killings; Me–School Desegregation.
6. INFLATION: Gen Z–Yes; Me–Worse.

Are things that much worse today? The facts speak for themselves.

Backed by thousands of years of precedent and a myriad of religious texts, reactionaries believe that gender is immutable and is established at birth. Furthermore, they believe that only heterosexual sex is “normal” and that any other kind is unnatural and an offense to God. State action is necessary to prevent society from being polluted by people who engage in unnatural behavior. Woke people, on the other hand, think gender and sex are fluid concepts and reject the concept of “normal” sex; in other words, everything is normal, and a society that imposes a single idea of normality on all of its citizens is oppressive and unjust.

As with race, there is plenty of middle ground between these ideas. You don’t have to accept the woke idea about sexual fluidity to oppose state action discriminating against trans people. I think that’s where most Americans stand today.

On the one hand, you can make a plausible argument that the government has just encouraged bankers to take inappropriate risks. On the other hand: only the depositors–not the investors or the bank management– were bailed out; the bank’s errors look more like negligence and ineptitude than excessive, out-of-control greed; and is it really fair to expect depositors to know how their bank is investing their funds?

To me, the decisive point is that America is way too fragile, given the pandemic, January 6, a potential Trump indictment, and the pending debt ceiling crisis, to tolerate a series of failing banks. Based on the totality of the circumstances, I think the bailout was the right decision.

The 1619 Project is an icon–perhaps the icon–of racial wokeness in America. While the NYT insists that it is just a needed corrective to the standard narrative of American history, it was actually proposed as a definitive counter-narrative, in which white people are always oppressors, black people are always heroic defenders of democracy, and nothing ever gets better. You don’t have to be a reactionary to be offended by that message.

Reactionaries view American history very differently, as you would expect, and are trying to turn their views into something like an official state ideology. Their story runs something like this:

1. America was founded by white European Christians. The country belongs to them. Black people are interlopers.
2. Slavery and racism are just an unfortunate blip in the heroic arc of American history.
3. The Civil War and Reconstruction were about the unlawful encroachment of federal power into the Confederacy, not slavery.
4. The unfortunate blip was eliminated for good in the 1960s.
5. America has been a land of freedom and complete equality since the success of the Civil Rights Movement. There is consequently no need for any kind of affirmative action or white guilt. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a racist.

There is plenty of middle ground between these two extreme opinions. I suspect that most Americans accept the notion that significant flaws remain in our system, but that our country is not an evil, racist empire. Will our textbooks continue to reflect that position, or will reactionary thought be imposed on our students? TBD.

Some commentators believe an indictment will actually improve Trump’s chances of winning the nomination. Are they right?

Not really. The principal effect of an indictment would be to increase the size of the wedge between the 30 percent and the 70 percent within the GOP. It would undoubtedly strengthen the connection between Trump and the diehard 30 percent, but their allegiance was never really in doubt, anyway. The 70 percent already thinks he’s a loser; the prospect of nominating someone under indictment will intensify that opinion.

The real question is whether any one candidate can win an overwhelming majority of the 70 percent. DeSantis seems to think they belong to him by default, which may or may not turn out to be correct. An indictment will make it even harder for him to filch the 30 percent from Trump. Where are his votes going to come from?

Ross Douthat, as well as many other reactionary writers, thinks a low birth rate is strong evidence of decadence. It shows that a society no longer has confidence in itself and its mission, and just wants to live for today. Decline inevitably follows.

But if that is the case, how do we account for the extremely low Chinese birth rate? Does anyone seriously believe that China is also decadent?

The fact is that low birth rates are tied to regulations, the size of the welfare state, the cost of living, and the character of the economy. They don’t really have much to do with decadence, however you may define the term.

In spite of all of those decades of conditioning to hate Russia, American reactionaries admire Putin and are willing to acquiesce to his territorial claims. Why? Because he’s not woke, of course! He’s an unapologetic straight white man! He oppresses gay and trans people! He swaggers! He’s a Christian! His army is committing war crimes in Ukraine! How admirably unwoke is that?

(Remember, Jesus drove a huge SUV, hated gay people and anyone who didn’t look like him, and carried an AR-15 everywhere he went. That’s why Christian nationalists do the same.)

You might be interjecting at this point that the reactionaries hate Xi, who is also an anti-woke warrior, as evidenced by his Uighur camps and his actions in Hong Kong. Yes, but Xi isn’t a Christian, and he’s Chinese. Fighting wokeness has a huge racial and cultural dimension; it isn’t just about being a swaggering, brutal authoritarian, although it certainly helps.

The problem for the reactionaries is that, if Putin wins in Ukraine, he is likely to be looking for territorial gains in Poland next. The Polish government is every bit as militantly anti-woke as Putin. What will they say then?

If you accept the Ukraine/World War I analogy, the part of America is being played by China, which is tilting towards and providing valuable assistance to Russia, but not actively participating in the war. Could that change? Could China save Putin’s bacon in the same way America helped win the war in 1918?

The Chinese have every reason to maintain their current posture of bogus neutrality, but if it looks like Putin is going to be humiliated, you can imagine them providing him with weapons and ammunition. They won’t provide troops, as there will be no 2023 equivalent of unrestricted submarine warfare against China, but they will do whatever they can to keep the Axis of Autocracy intact, since they lack reliable friends elsewhere. Anyone hoping for a complete victory for the Ukrainians needs to keep that in mind.