Month: October 2024

Honesty compels me to tell you that there are numerous similarities between Trump and Hitler. Hitler’s angry, sarcastic speaking style reminds one of Trump. Like Trump, Hitler was attempting to recreate a mythical golden age in his country’s history. He was lazy and liked to pit his followers against each other (imagine Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels in “The Nazi Apprentice”). He was, shall we say, not too concerned with telling people the truth. He rejected the advice of experts and relied on his intuition, which he viewed as being infallible. He tried to overthrow the government in a shambolic coup attempt but faced few legal consequences for it. Finally, he never won a majority of the vote in a fair election–not that it mattered in the end.

But Trump doesn’t have an SA. He’s much older than Hitler, and has less time left to implement his vision, such as it is. He’s far more driven by personal grievances than a monstrous ideology. He’s not a warmonger. His country is not staggering economically. America under the McConnell Project is still governable; the Communists are not the alternative. The differences thus exceed the similarities.

I think.

Power abhors a vacuum. Since the McConnell Project has made it virtually impossible for Congress to pass meaningful legislation–it can barely keep the lights on–real authority has passed to the judiciary and the states. Most of the publicity, of course, has focused on red state efforts to limit “freedom” to reactionary white male Christians, but some blue states have retaliated with mirror image legislation. The country was already splintering; Mitch has made things worse, although that was probably never part of the plan.

A big part of the Trump agenda will be to bring the liberal parts of the judiciary and the blue states under heel, since they will be the most active participants in the resistance. To what extent will he succeed? To what extent will the McConnell Constitution survive him? We will only find out if he wins.

Joe, Dr. Jill, and Hunter are at the White House, discussing the campaign.

JILL: You dropped out about a hundred days ago. How are you feeling about that?

JOE: It was kind of like the stages of dealing with death. I was angry at first. Now I accept it. Kamala has a fighting chance, and I didn’t. I didn’t have the energy to deal with Trump and the state of public opinion. Plus, I don’t have the pressure of being the only one standing between the country and fascism anymore. It’s a weight off my shoulders.

HUNTER: But Dad, you saved America from Trump before. You would have done it again. Besides, the party and the country owed you! You were entitled to run again!

JOE: That’s Trumpist talk, son. The country didn’t owe me power. In a liberal democracy, power is a privilege, not a right. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

JILL: I think it’s for the best. And I think America will ultimately recognize what you accomplished. It will just take some time.

JOE: If there’s one thing that really bugs me, it’s that the country doesn’t appreciate everything we’ve done. All the polls say Americans think they’re worse off now than they were in 2020. That’s just not true.

JILL: They blame you for inflation, which wasn’t your fault.

JOE: It’s a bunch of malarkey. Inflation was a worldwide phenomenon. They even had it in Japan. We came back from the pandemic with the strongest economy in the world. And even Kamala can’t persuade the people that we did a good job. At this point, she isn’t even trying.

JILL: It’s really frustrating. Trump gets a pass for the pandemic unemployment, even though his response was ridiculous and chaotic, but you don’t get a pass for pandemic inflation.

JOE: I don’t get it. I really don’t.

HUNTER: Dad, we really need to talk about a pardon before you leave.

JOE: It’s too early, son. Let the process play itself out. You might not need one.

HUNTER: But you know I’m the victim of political persecution. No one else would have been prosecuted for those offenses.

JOE: There’s some truth to that. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Maybe Trump would agree to pardon you if he wins.

JILL: Perhaps if Trump wins, you could offer to tell the DOJ to drop the charges against him in an effort to bind the nation’s wounds in exchange for a pardon for Hunter. It would be a good way to start the new presidency. Trump would actually come across as a unifier.

JOE: That’s an interesting idea. I hope Kamala wins and it never comes into play, but I’ll keep it in mind if things go the wrong way.

In an interview with Ezra Klein in yesterday’s NYT, Ramaswamy tells us that Trump is threatening to impose universal tariffs solely as a temporary expedient to force our friends to lower theirs. He also advises us that, after the border is under control, Trump will support efforts to liberalize the immigration system to bring in hordes of foreign talent. Finally, Trump will put a torch to the welfare state, reduce the national debt, and drive our workers out of the hammock of dependency. In short, Trump isn’t a Reactionary; he’s a secret Conservative Libertarian. He may have personal issues with Paul Ryan, but his hidden ideology is Ryan on steroids.

You may interject at this point that Ramaswamy is deluded, and that his version of “Trump” belongs in a libertarian comic book. Trump wants to bring back the economy of the 1950s and force people to suck up to him, not create Galt’s Gulch. I agree, but there is a larger point here; Trump has convinced an extremely wide range of extremists with very different dreams that he is on their side even though he has an extensive record that proves them wrong. The first step in creating the new shining city on the hill, whether it be the Godly Society or the techno-aristocracy, is to pull down the corrupt bureaucrat-ridden system we have today. Trump’s powers of destruction are an indispensable phase of the revolution.

Loud backup beepers most of the day, every working day. Countless large trucks rumbling through our subdivision, damaging our roads and endangering pedestrians. A lost view of the river. Changed community aesthetics. Swarms of noisy employees.

Those are the impacts of the construction of just one enormous house in our neighborhood in a period of over a year. There is nothing in it for us except inconvenience. It disrupts our quality of life and gives us nothing positive in return.

The YIMBYs clearly have a case for more housing, but they don’t appear to understand that while additional residential development may be in the best interests of the community as a whole, it imposes nothing but costs on the surrounding owners. The answer to this is for government and developers to provide benefits to the neighborhood in mitigation for those costs. I suggested two ways of doing that in a post about a year ago. I wish the YIMBYs would embrace one or both of them.

As I’ve noted many times before, the McConnell version of the Constitution, based on the Electoral College, Republican gerrymandering, the filibuster, and reactionary judges, makes it extremely difficult for the left to win and exercise power. That is the principal reason the Harris campaign isn’t promoting an ambitious agenda for the next four years.

But polarization and the filibuster work to slow down the GOP to some extent, as well–at least at the federal level. Trump’s agenda relies mostly on executive action, not legislation, but the time will come when he will want to legislate, as well. Then what?

McConnell is now an outsider within the GOP. There will be efforts made to get rid of the filibuster. In addition, Trump will almost certainly be violating court orders on immigration issues in order to please his base. Both of these developments will throw the viability of the McConnell Project into question.

The ultimate beneficiaries of reactionary activism may well be the left. The Supreme Court will be less of an obstacle to fundamental reform if Trump establishes a right to ignore it, and the filibuster won’t be a problem if the GOP gets rid of it.

There was a time–possibly during my lifetime–when people relied heavily on the local newspaper for their political opinions, having few other sources of news. Those days are gone, probably never to return. As a result, there is a case to be made for refusing to provide endorsements; after all, if you aren’t going to sway public opinion, and you may piss off a large portion of your readership, what’s the point?

But the timing of Jeff Bezos’ decision not to endorse in the presidential race makes it clear that his motivations were completely different; he was afraid of angering Trump, and he didn’t want to face any form of retaliation. Read your own paper, Jeff. Democracy dies in darkness; it also dies when powerful people cut deals with authoritarians to save their own skins.

The Conservatives were crushed in the UK election. Extremists on both the right and the left dominated the French one. The German left-leaning coalition is clearly heading for electoral disaster. Now even the Japanese Liberal Democrats have lost their majority. All over the world, it seems, the electorate is angry. What appears at first glance to be a wave of populism is actually an attack on incumbents, regardless of who or where they are.

For all that, Harris has a roughly 50 percent chance to win next week. Why? For three reasons. First, the American economy is in good shape in spite of what most voters say in public. Second, the American electorate is more polarized on cultural issues than its Asian and European counterparts, which creates a high floor and a low ceiling for both parties. Donald Trump is the third reason. He inspires intense opposition in a way that the leaders of parties in other countries do not.

For better or worse, Sherrod Brown is a genuine economic populist, unlike the faux kind that the Republicans keep running out against him. He has been airing biting commercials describing his latest opponent as a wealthy car salesman who will say anything to get elected. He is more likely than not to win, even in an Ohio that is now deep red.

What is the message here for Democrats? Joe Biden did his level best to pass himself off as a similar champion of labor, but he wasn’t rewarded for it. Part of that is because he was (wrongly) held responsible for inflation, while Brown, as a mere senator, was not; part of it was Biden’s inability to command the stage and persuade the public that his record on the economy was a good one; and part of it was the fact that Biden had to speak for booming blue states as well as struggling red ones. Populism doesn’t play as well in California as it does in Ohio.

The Israeli strike on Iran was limited to suitable military targets. It is unlikely to lead to a wider war. Why?

Because the Israelis figure they can handle the proxies by themselves, but they need the active support of America before they go after the head of the snake. Biden won’t give them a blank check. Harris probably won’t, either. Would Trump? My guess is yes, but, for all of his personality issues, he’s not really a warmonger, so the answer is TBD.

Agrarian populists made three demands in the 1890s: increased regulation of the railroads; a larger money supply; and free trade. This platform was perfectly sensible and was completely consistent with the economic needs of the farmers. Most of it became law in the long run.

Today, the descendants of the 1890s populists are among Trump’s biggest supporters, because he assures them that they, the hardworking white Christians, are true Americans, and we are not. But Trump’s agenda includes the deportation of illegal immigrants, business deregulation, and tariffs, more or less the polar opposite of what the 1890s populists required. The former will deplete the agricultural workforce; the latter will invite retaliation against American farm products and thus dry up export markets. If the Trump agenda is implemented, therefore, it will be an economic disaster for his strongest constituents.

But we know how this story ends. Trump will reward them for their loyalty. Huge sums of our money bearing his name will be sent to them as compensation. The formerly self-reliant farmers will become wards of the state at our expense, while continuing to lecture us about how anyone who supports a robust welfare state isn’t a real American.

George Washington, as the story goes, couldn’t tell a lie. He was dignified and reserved. He had good taste. He hired the best people to work for him and kept them on as long as possible. His sense of public service was off the charts. He was an unbelievably brave man and a military hero. In the end, he walked away from power and returned home willingly–even enthusiastically. He deserves to be known as the father of his country.

Now, imagine someone who is the opposite of that in every respect. Oh, that’s right; you don’t have to imagine him. He’s the GOP nominee for president.

In 2016, nobody, including Trump, expected him to win. This time, we know the election is a coin flip, and we might lose. In addition, we have no illusions about the quality of the man who will be our next president. The next four years will be awful; the only question is whether it will be first term awful, or fascist awful.

Here is how we need to respond:

1. DON’T BLAME THE ELECTORATE: About half of the GOP, and a quarter of the electorate, genuinely wants to burn down American liberal democracy. The rest is voting for the economy of 2019. They may be deluded, but they’re not evil. They will turn on Trump when he fails.
2. PICK YOUR BATTLES CAREFULLY: There are some things we won’t be able to change. For example, support for Ukraine will be over, and the criminal cases against Trump will disappear. Don’t waste energy on these issues; just prepare to pick up the pieces when the nightmare ends.
3. MAKE TRUMP WEAR HIS FAILURES: Trump will probably start his term as the most unpopular president in American history. His tariffs and his deportation scheme will make matters worse with the element of the population that just wants him to wave his imaginary magic wand and make inflation disappear. Give his failures the maximum degree of publicity and drive his numbers down even further. The rest of the GOP will take notice.
4. BE COMPLETELY PEACEFUL: The fascist element of the GOP will be looking for a Reichstag fire. Don’t give them what they want. Discipline is essential.
5. BE BRAVE WHEN NECESSARY: It is possible that Trump will order troops to fire on peaceful protesters, and that the military will follow those orders. If it happens, don’t be deterred. Freedom comes with a price tag, after all.

An exhausted Trump has come home to Mar-a-Lago. Lindsey Graham is waiting for him.

T: Why are you here, Linseed? Why aren’t you out campaigning?

G: Arnold Palmer’s penis? Really?

T: It was his hometown. The crowd loved it. It got me on TV. What more could you ask?

G: Is that really the way to appeal to undecided women voters?

T: There aren’t really any undecided voters left to appeal to. It’s all about the base now. The base loves it when I’m outrageous. It assures them I’m not a normal politician, and I won’t sell them out.

G: But all of the polls say the election is razor close. Why would you take the risk?

T: My gut tells me it’s the right thing to do, and it never fails me.

G: What about 2020?

T: I won in 2020. The election was stolen. You remember that, right?

G: Oh, yeah. I forgot. What’s your plan for the end game?

T: Do what I always do. Play the hits. It always works.

G: But the hits are sounding more like fascism every day. Is that really a good idea?

T: Fascism means whatever I say it means. By my definition, Harris is a fascist, and I believe in democracy. I speak for the people and give them what they want.

G: Let’s be real here–at best, you speak for 51 percent of America, and the rest of it hates your guts.

T: The rest of it isn’t real America. Real America loves me. It wants to give me absolute power to inflict pain on the rest. Who am I to argue with them?

G: Do you plan to create some sort of October surprise?

T: Well, I might call Putin and ask him to step up the war in Ukraine. A few big Russian victories would help my cause.

G: Don’t even think about that, much less do it.

T: We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on Russia and Ukraine.

G: Any other ideas?

T: Maybe Bibi would attack Iran’s oil refineries and drive prices up. That would help.

G: Not sure that’s a good idea, either.

T: Well, if you don’t like those ideas, maybe I should just stick to playing the hits.

G: I guess that isn’t such a bad idea, after all. (He leaves)

Like the Founding Fathers, Kamala Harris is a child of the Enlightenment. She processes information and gains knowledge through her senses. She trusts experts, not her intuition. She believes the human condition can get better through experimentation, openness to change, and trial and error.

Donald Trump belongs to a much older philosophical tradition. He basically tells us to ignore the evidence of our senses and just trust him, because he is divinely inspired. You could call it medieval, but that would be an insult to the Catholic Church, which worked hard to create an institutional framework to distinguish saints from frauds. In reality, he reminds me more of some bygone Native American tribal leaders than any figure from European history.