Month: September 2024

Imagine that you are Xi Jinping, and you are watching the American election with great, if somewhat morbid, interest. Which candidate do you view as the lesser of two evils?

Harris is the more predictable choice. She will continue to promote Biden’s policy of flexible containment. She will also keep imposing restrictions on the use of American and European technology. It is unlikely, however, that she will propose any sort of new universal tariffs on Chinese goods. In the short run, she is the more comfortable choice.

Trump will inflict immediate pain on your economy with his tariffs. He will, however, alienate America’s allies, which will be of great assistance to you in the longer run. He may also be amenable to a lopsided deal on managed trade or even Taiwan. Is that possibility worth the short-term pain?

You have little ability to influence the outcome of the election, so in all likelihood, you just sit back and deal with the consequences. Que sera, sera.

In the 1790s, a British delegation led by Lord Macartney came to China with a collection of newfangled manufactured goods and asked the Qianlong Emperor for the right to trade. The emperor airily dismissed the request on the basis that China was completely self-sufficient and had no need of any British goods. The British ultimately found a commodity that the Chinese people could not resist–opium–and things went downhill from there.

Like his imperial predecessor, Xi Jinping wants China to be self-sufficient. He is determined to avoid becoming dependent on American tech, and he has taken significant steps both to promote Chinese energy production and to protect the sea lanes for oil tankers. Finally, he wants American and European businesses and consumers to be so dependent on the Chinese market and goods that they won’t dare challenge China in its sphere of influence. It is an area in which he has had considerable success, particularly with the Germans.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It is truer of China than most places.

If you watch the Trump commercials carefully, you will note that he never talks about his tariffs or even his tax cuts; he simply compares selected parts of his record to Biden’s and concludes that America trusts him on the economy. When you think about it a bit more, blind faith in the man on golf cart is at the heart of his pitch to the public.

Sure, Trump is unconventional. He can be a little rough with his mouth. He’s divisive, he breaks traditional rules, and he constantly says things that your experience tells you aren’t true. His view of the world doesn’t in the least match up with what you see in your everyday life. But it all works out in the end somehow, because Trump is a magic man. Trust him. Trust him.

Or, to put it another way, Trump works in mysterious ways. It isn’t for you to question him–just follow him, and you’ll be OK.

He believed very firmly that hard work and adherence to traditional values made his country great. Strengthening the welfare state was a mistake, even if it would reduce poverty and insecurity, because it would encourage laziness and mediocrity. He would not tolerate a “hammock of dependency” in his country.

Is it Xi or Paul Ryan? You decide.

The conventional wisdom (but not mine) is that Israel is escalating the air campaign in Lebanon in the hope that Hezbollah will back down. If so, it isn’t working. Hezbollah is continuing to fire missiles at Israel, but in proportion to the intensity of the air campaign; its leaders insist it will not stop until there is a cease-fire in Gaza. If nothing changes, therefore, the Israelis must either admit their effort to prevent missile attacks is a failure or begin a major ground offensive.

If the latter, what then? Lebanon isn’t Gaza, where Hamas can only hide in the civilian population or go underground; if the Israelis take Hezbollah’s initial positions, the fighters can simply retreat to the north or even into Syria. Some of their missiles, in all likelihood, can still hit Israel from there. Then what? Are the Israelis going to occupy most of Lebanon, and even some of Syria? And this, with the Gaza campaign still going on?

The Israelis tried occupying parts of Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s. In the end, it didn’t work. Why would the result be any different this time?

Pope Francis recently commented that the American election came down to the lesser of two evils, since Harris supported abortion and Trump advocated cruelty towards immigrants. It is unlikely that either Harris or Trump cared very much, but J.D., a fervent Catholic who wants to remake America on the lines established by medieval theologians, certainly should.

Vance, Douthat, and other prominent New Right figures who rail about excessive immigration clearly take their Catholicism a la carte. It was about time for someone to call them on it.

He wanted to make his country great again. How would that be done? Not simply by adding useless wealth and consumption, but by increasing the population, promoting traditional social values, and running a large trade surplus. National self-sufficiency and social and political stability were the ultimate objectives.

Is it Xi or J.D.? You decide.

It’s official–Mark Robinson is the worst candidate for a major political office I have ever seen. He has no chance of winning an election he should win, and he may even cost Trump North Carolina, which would effectively cost the man on golf cart the presidency. The Democrats put pressure on Biden to withdraw under somewhat similar circumstances, but the Republicans are doing nothing of the sort to Robinson even though the stakes could hardly be higher. What does this tell us?

While the Democrats are a normal political party that seeks to win and exercise power, the Republicans are controlled by MAGA. With the exception of Trump, it cares less about winning elections than owning the libs. It has no positive vision for America, but it wants to stick it to the people it hates. It will forgive any kind of transgressive behavior or opinion–in fact, the more outrageous and extreme, the better–as a form of protest against the establishment even at the risk of losing votes. The only thing it won’t tolerate is the willingness to concede any ground to the corrupt system.

Like Matt Gaetz and Ken Paxton, just to name a few, Robinson has angrily asserted his innocence and blamed his problems on the liberal media. That’s what a true MAGA person does regardless of the truth or falsity of the allegations. As a result, the base won’t desert him in spite of the potential consequences.

Ross Douthat argues that both parties are doing their best to keep ideology out of the campaign. Is he right?

As to Harris and the Democrats, yes, and mostly for the reasons he cites in his column. For the blue team, the overriding objective is to keep Trump out of power; injecting big, expensive dreams of a better future into the campaign would be controversial and threaten party unity. In addition, the budget deficit, inflation, the Supreme Court, and the lack of votes in the Senate all make enacting an ambitious agenda implausible. It makes sense for Harris to play small ball and let Trump be the issue in the campaign.

But as to Trump and the GOP, not really, because Douthat doesn’t take MAGA seriously as an ideology. MAGA’s goal is to give Donald Trump unlimited power to do whatever he wants, which clearly includes making blue America–feminazis, whiny minorities, liberal university professors, woke businessmen, grasping bureaucrats, and the MSM– as poor, powerless, and miserable as possible. MAGA doesn’t care about policy and lacks any realistic vision of a more prosperous and virtuous America, but it knows what it hates, so it is willing to accept any position on any issue that will ultimately help Trump win power. That may not be a comprehensive ideology in the sense that the Godly Society is, but the Godly Society is unpopular with the American people and is inconsistent with liberal democracy, so it will have to wait until Trump swings his wrecking ball first.

If you want to know how I’m feeling about the election, look at the cover of the October edition of The Atlantic. It will tell you everything you need to know.

We know why Trump picked Vance as his running mate; clearly overconfident, he thought he didn’t need to appeal to undecided voters, so he wanted someone who would keep the base happy by consistently owning the libs. On that count, at least, Vance has been a success. But Vance isn’t just a troll; he’s an intelligent ideologue who wants to convert America to the Godly Society against its wishes. Why would he sell out by telling lies about Haitians eating pets?

Trump sees MAGA voters purely as a means to give himself arbitrary power over America. MAGA goes along with this because it believes Trump will burn the current (and in its eyes, corrupt) version of America down. Vance sees the destruction of American liberal democracy by Trump and MAGA as the first step in the creation of the Godly Society. In the short run, therefore, Vance and MAGA are allies.

Once the system has been destroyed by Trump and MAGA, what will come next in actual practice? I think MTG’s New Confederacy, a selectively libertarian nation in which red states are given the freedom to be as beastly and repressive to powerless groups as possible, is a better bet than Vance’s Godly Society or Musk’s techno-aristocracy. But it is early days, so we really don’t know.

Trump and DeSantis are doing battle once again in Florida. DeSantis opposes the proposed amendment to the state constitution to permit the recreational marijuana, while Trump supports it.

What does this mean? As I’ve noted before, reactionaries are not monolithic; the predominant strain is libertarian and secular, while a smaller, but noisier, group is religious–largely Catholic. Trump represents the first group; DeSantis and, ironically, J.D. Vance are in the second group.

They represent two completely different ideas of a just America. DeSantis and Vance want to use the state to impose the Godly Society on us; Trump just wants to use it to deport illegal immigrants and get revenge on his opponents. They only agree on what they hate, which is, of course, people like you and me.

Q: You indicated that you thought unauthorized border crossings should be decriminalized during a 2019 debate. You were put in charge of finding and solving the root causes of illegal immigration by Biden, but the unauthorized crossings only got worse. You and Biden only implemented tough and successful regulations a few months before the election. Why should Americans trust you on this issue?

A: We need to put this in historical context. You will recall that Trump’s solution to the border issue was extreme cruelty, including the family separation policy. That caused the Democratic Party to lurch to the left on immigration issues. Only Joe Biden resisted that. I got caught up in it because I thought that’s where the votes were in the primary. I changed my position once I became part of the Democratic ticket.

When Joe and I took office, we were determined to implement a policy that was tough, orderly, and humane, as opposed to Trump, who was just cruel. I was tasked with the job of dealing with Central American leaders to reduce immigration from their countries. I was successful; that isn’t where the problem is now.

A number of things happened to make our job more difficult. First of all, we started seeing masses of immigrants from different countries that were experiencing political instability, such as Venezuela. The instability there is to some extent on the hands of Trump and the GOP. Second, Title 42, the primary way in which Trump was regulating border crossings, became unenforceable due to the end of the pandemic. Third, we were sued by a number of pro-immigrant groups who argued that we were just as bad as Trump; they had some success in court. Finally, the system was grossly underfunded, but Congress refused to help.

We ultimately worked with Republicans to come up with a bipartisan bill that would properly fund the system and give us legal remedies to some loopholes in the system. Trump succeeded in killing the bill because he wanted to run on the issue, not solve it. We then adopted regulations that incorporated a lot of the ideas in the bill. It would have been better to do that by legislation, because we know the regulations are vulnerable to legal challenge. As long as the judicial system doesn’t overturn those regulations, however, the system is working.

In the end, the American public has to make a choice. Trump’s plan to use the military and local officials to undertake massive raids, and to build huge deportation camps, is probably illegal and certainly un-American. Is that what we as a country want? Do we want cruelty to replace sensible policy? That will be up to the voters.

Life in the time of Trump.

The great debate is done.

Trump believes he kicked some ass

No one else thinks he won.

The polls say Trump’s a bit behind.

It could go either way.

I’ll sit and watch with my heart in my throat

On an endless Election Day.

The Israeli government is understandably distressed that Hezbollah missiles have made the northern part of the country a war zone. A significant part of Israel is currently uninhabitable. What should the government do?

It has two options. The first alternative is to reach a cease-fire agreement on Gaza, which will eliminate the justification for the ongoing Hezbollah attacks. The second is to launch an offensive in Lebanon. This option will result in thousands of Israeli casualties–soldiers and civilians alike–with no guarantee of success. It could also result in the direct involvement of Iran, and possibly even a nuclear conflict.

Naturally, the government seems to prefer Option 2. Biden will have to do everything in his power to prevent it from happening. This will have to include making it clear that America will assist Israel in its efforts to defend its territory but will not finance or contribute weapons to an offensive war that is inconsistent with America’s interests.