Month: July 2023

The parties, the leaders, and the issues will seem depressingly familiar to Americans. In one corner, we have the blue team: the secular and progressive side that makes the money, pays the taxes, and fights the wars. In the other corner, we have the red team: the religious side that feels disrespected by the elite and wants to use politics to impose its values and get even. The religious side is led by a man who needs to stay in office and eliminate the few checks and balances in the system in order to avoid ongoing legal problems. Is this ringing any bells for you?

What is happening in Israel today could be the harbinger of similar events in this country if Trump wins in 2024. Let’s hope we don’t find out.

In light of the actions taken by DeSantis, the Florida Legislature, and their predecessors, what does the future hold for the Sunshine State? Here’s a reasonable guess:

1. As climate change gets worse, and property insurance becomes unaffordable for all except the very wealthy, working people will be forced to leave the state. Coastal areas will be dominated by hideously expensive elevated concrete caverns. The character of cozy coastal downtowns will be changed forever. Even residents of less affluent interior areas will be forced to leave.
2. The DeSantis war on wokeness is, in reality, largely a war on young people. They will leave, too.
3. Finally, the immigrants who perform most of the difficult physical labor will feel unwelcome, and will depart, as a result of the 2023 immigration legislation.

What you are left with is a state dominated culturally and politically by a relative handful of old, wealthy people, who will complain incessantly that nobody is around to cut their grass and fix their homes. Even they will flee Florida during the summer, as the heat and the hurricanes will make life unbearable after the end of March. But hey, look on the bright side! At least they will be free.

I don’t ordinarily deconstruct my own work, but I’m going to make an exception in this case. Here goes:

1. The post was inspired by an Ezra Klein interview with a novelist named Barbara Kingsolver, who basically tells us that white rural residents are the virtuous victims of contempt, indifference, and even malevolence from city dwellers. In her view, they are justified in supporting Trump, even if he operates against their interests in actual practice, because he shows them the respect they deserve, and hates the same people they do.
2. We can easily admit that there are plenty of urbanites who view rural America as “flyover country,” but the contempt runs both ways, and is ageless. Remember Al Smith? Remember the KKK? Remember the Know-Nothings? Remember Jefferson’s views of immigrants and cities? White Protestant America’s view of itself as the only true, incorruptible America in an existential battle with evil interlopers has existed for centuries. It doesn’t taste any better now than it did then, particularly since the left really wants to help these people, who seem to prefer anger and nostalgia to federal spending programs.
3. The snooty liberal establishment didn’t push opioids on rural residents; voracious capitalists did. In a similar vein, environmentalists didn’t close down the mines; the mine owners did, as a result of economic forces that were beyond the control of either group. The intellectual left consistently gets the blame for this, however.
4. Trump and his supporters clearly view struggling white rural residents through the lens of the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t buy it, for several reasons. First, the plight of white rural residents has never remotely approached the condition of slavery. Second, those residents always had the ability to leave and sand down their accents if necessary; black people cannot do that. Third, and most importantly, the vast majority of black people believe in liberal democracy, in spite of everything they have suffered throughout the centuries. White rural supporters of Trump, on the other hand, believe they are entitled to rule whether they represent a majority of voters or not, and they are perfectly willing to burn it down if they are unsuccessful in fair elections.
5. It is true that the “burn it down” crowd has an analogy in the handful of black protesters who have torched businesses over the years in an effort to bring attention to lingering injustice. The difference is that the protesters only burned down their own communities; white Christian reactionaries want to burn down the entire country.

SUMMERTIME

Summertime

But the livin’ ain’t easy.

Temps are jumpin’;

The heat index is high.

But your daddy’s rich

And he’s got air conditioning.

So hush, little baby.

Don’t you cry.

_______________

Not in the North Carolina mountains, fortunately.

---

They’re mad as hell, and who can blame them? The white elites have always viewed them as inferior, and discriminated against them. Their culture is despised. Their labor was exploited mercilessly by the rich, who left them with nothing. The government does nothing for them. What should they do?

They’re ready to burn it down. That’s why it’s time to talk about reparations for hillbillies.

The local reactionaries wanted a crackdown on immigration, and the politicians were more than willing to give it to them. The immigrants predictably left in droves. Guess what happened after that? There were serious labor shortages in businesses that were critical to the voters. You couldn’t find anyone to mow your lawn or fix your house or pick your crops or take care of your elderly parents anymore. The reactionaries grumbled that this wasn’t what they thought they were getting, but they were just being stupid, and it was way too late to do anything about it.

This is the UK after Brexit. Is it Florida after the new immigration legislation? Probably.

The McConnell Project is an attempt by the right to keep the left from exercising power when in office by the skillful use of the various checks and balances in the federal government. On its own terms, it has been a success; with partisan legislation and major administrative initiatives off-limits, the only real power remaining in the hands of the left revolves around the budget. Times are changing, however; neither Trump nor DeSantis has any time for checks and balances. Both of the most likely GOP nominees want to politicize the DOJ; both want to replace thousands of career civil servants with right-wing extremists; Trump wants to bring several powerful independent government agencies under his control; and both undoubtedly will demand an end to the filibuster. Since Trump and DeSantis collectively poll at about 70 percent, one has to assume that this agenda has the support of the GOP electorate.

These proposed changes will empower the executive branch at the expense of civil servants, the American people, and Congress. What will Mitch do in response? Will he fight back, knowing that a government without guardrails can be used autocratically by the left as well as the right? Or will he just sit back and let it happen in the name of party unity?

Let’s hope we never find out.

Xi has plenty of issues with the current US government, but he welcomed Henry Kissinger to China a few days ago. What kind of message is he trying to send?

Kissinger is his kind of American, for three reasons. First, as a foreign policy realist, Kissinger notoriously downplays human rights issues in autocracies as a motivating factor in American foreign policy. He couldn’t care less about Hong Kong or the Uighurs. Second, Kissinger is level-headed and indifferent to the passions in American politics; he is a man with whom one can do business regardless of the state of public opinion. Finally, Xi probably believes that Kissinger would recommend acquiescence to a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia, based on his admiration of Metternich and the system he created after the Napoleonic Wars. In the end, that’s really the question: will American accept Chinese domination of most of Asia without a fight, or not?

“Look, I know you really liked a lot of the things that Trump did in office. You liked the economy prior to the pandemic, and you enjoyed it when he owned the libs. You thought the chaos was worth it. I totally get that. In fact, I agree with a lot of it.

But we have to face facts. Trump needlessly divided the country just for his own ego and entertainment. He treated the government as if it were just another form of his business. He sucked up to Putin and other dictators in a way that was embarrassing and even dangerous. Finally, he totally botched the pandemic by refusing to take it seriously. Hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily as a result.

The 2020 election was fair, and he lost it by seven million votes. He even lost states that had been historically red. What did he do then? He filed frivolous lawsuits, and lost them, even before a Supreme Court with three of his nominees and six conservatives. He came up with ridiculous schemes to overturn state certifications. Finally, he whipped up a mob on January 6 and then watched them attack the Capitol without trying to stop them. It was arguably the most disgraceful episode in American political history.

Donald Trump isn’t fit to be president. January 6 put an end to that. If you nominate him, we will lose again, and it will be your fault, because you ignored the facts. That’s the truth, whether you like it or not.”

He didn’t have the support of most of the country. He knew that only too well. But he was determined to break the guardrails and give himself absolute power in order to glorify himself and take the nation back to where it was before. How could he do it?

First, he would fire as many civil servants as possible, and replace them with his loyalists. Second, he would rely on the judges he appointed to push his agenda forward. With their help, the Constitution could effectively be rewritten, and his political opponents could be neutered. His country would be great again.

Is it James II or Donald I? If Trump wins in 2024, we are likely to find out.

“I was born and raised a Catholic. I am completely pro-life, and I don’t apologize for it. While I’m at it, I’ll tell you that I’m not woke, I don’t support affirmative action, and I can tell the difference between a man and a woman. I’m on the right side on all of the culture war stuff, and I’ll never change my mind on any of it.

But we have to realize that a substantial majority of Americans don’t accept our position on abortion. The idea of a national ban is consequently horrible politics. Furthermore, how are we going to ram our position down their throats when their state governments refuse to cooperate with a federal ban? Is it going to be like Prohibition? Are we going to declare martial law? Are we going to hire hundreds of thousands of new federal law enforcement officers to enforce the law? Give me a break!

Abortion is, and should remain, a state issue. If Alabama and Oklahoma want to ban it altogether, God bless them. Just don’t try to impose a ban on blue states unless you want to lose more elections. I’m in it to win.”

If he didn’t before, he does now.

“I told you in 2016 that Social Security and Medicare were getting close to insolvency, and that something needed to be done. Nobody paid any attention to me. Today, the problem is still there, except it’s worse. The two current frontrunners for the nomination have no plan to fix it, or even any apparent desire to do so. That puts the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk. It’s completely irresponsible.

It’s too late to solve the problem by raising the retirement age–many of the Boomers have already retired, and more are retiring every passing day. We can’t cut their payments, because too many of them are completely reliant on them. So what can we do?

There are two things we can do right away. First, we can change the cost of living formula for Social Security to be more realistic. That will save some money. Second, with my carbon tax, and with the elimination of the Biden subsidies, there will be plenty of money in the overall budget to fill in the gaps. That’s exactly what we’ll do until we can come up with a long term bipartisan fix.

That’s my plan. Without one, our retirees are going to be facing a roughly 20 percent cut in income in the foreseeable future. You need to be asking the other people on this stage what they’re planning to do to solve the problem. If you don’t vote for me or hold them accountable, you have only yourself to blame when the cuts come.”

Every now and then, you hear something that is so stupid or cynical, it takes your breath away. That happened to me yesterday while I was watching the NBC News. During a story on the soaring cost of property insurance in Florida, the state’s CFO blamed the problem on “woke” insurance companies.

That’s right. Insurance companies aren’t raising rates because the cost of tropical events is increasing due to the state’s failure to deal with climate change; they’re doing it because they’re “woke.” Ignore the bottom line and stick with the narrative, guys!

Apparently the plan here is to “solve” the problem by making you hate your insurance company. That may win DeSantis some votes in the short run, but it certainly isn’t going to decrease the cost of property insurance.

Nancy Mace has come to McCarthy’s office to talk strategy.

MACE: Help me out, Kevin. I’m a little confused about something.

MCCARTHY: Sure. Whatever I can do to help.

MACE: Our ultimate objective is to keep control of the House next year, right?

MCCARTHY: Of course.

MACE: And to do that, we need to hold the Biden districts we managed to win last year, right?

MCCARTHY: Right again.

MACE: And a logical way to do that is to look moderate, constructive, and reasonable to the average swing voter, right?

MCCARTHY: Can’t argue with that.

MACE: Then why are we threatening to pass federal abortion legislation, holding up the defense bill, talking about budget cuts that weren’t in your Biden deal, and openly looking at impeachments that are going nowhere?

MCCARTHY: I have to keep the party united. That means appeasing the crazoids and the base.

MACE: But we can’t win doing that. We’ve shown that over and over again. As they say about Twitter, the base isn’t America.

MCCARTHY: No, but it’s a huge part of the Republican Party, and it demands red meat. It’s very hungry. I have to keep it happy.

MACE: So we’re going down the same path as before. Most of America thinks the base is nuts. How is that going to lead to a better result?

MCCARTHY: Something will turn up. We’ll be OK.

MACE: Like what?

MCCARTHY: I don’t know. Maybe Putin will win in Ukraine. Maybe we’ll have a big recession. Something good will happen. Trust me.

MACE: So our plan is to wait for a miracle?

MCCARTHY: They happen more often than you think. Remember, God is on our side. We’re Republicans, after all.

Mace leaves, not looking very happy.