Month: September 2025

Ezra Klein is tearing his hair out. He thinks the left needs to be willing to engage with millions of Americans who don’t share their values and visions of a just America, but he doesn’t want to compromise those values, either. Can those ideas be reconciled?

History shows that successful missionary work is based on three principles. First of all, do everything you can to maximize points of agreement before you try to push on the points of dispute. Second, focus your attention on the individuals who can make the biggest difference; in the Dark Ages, that meant kings, but today, it probably means pundits and influencers. Finally, if you have some sort of technology or magic trick you can use to show the superiority of your ideology, display it as quickly as possible. In today’s world, that probably translates to economic successes on the left and failures on the right.

If you were to ask Xi Jinping why the USSR imploded, he would probably give you two reasons. First, Gorbachev was a wimp; he wasn’t willing to use massive amounts of military force against his own people. The CCP didn’t make that mistake. Second, the Soviet government either couldn’t or wouldn’t make the necessary economic changes to improve the lives of the people. The CCP learned that lesson, and the rest is history.

Xi would be right about the first item, although it would hardly do him credit. Two observations are pertinent as to the second: the USSR would never have received the international support for a liberalization program that the Chinese did; and Gorbachev was a better Marxist than Xi, because he believed that a transition to a capitalist society would inevitably result in dramatic changes to the government. The CCP, in effect, proved Marx wrong on that point.

Life in the time of Trump.

The retribution’s here.

The DOJ is lashing out

To fill the left with fear.

Jim Comey is the first in line

He likely won’t be last.

So keep your head down if you must

Until the storm has passed.

There is a certain elegance to a general theory of reincarnation; think of it as a form of cosmic recycling that never wastes anything. I sometimes call it the Law of Conservation of Spirit, echoing a law of physics. But is it accurate?

I have only my experiences to go on, of course, but my answer would be no. What I believe to be my own rebirth was a matter of choice based on my early death in Victorian times. I was not joined by most of the members of my family, who were satisfied to remain on the other side and exert their influence from there. Having enjoyed the opportunity to develop my talents to their fullest on this occasion, I will be happy to be reunited with my family for good when the time comes.

I suspect Xi thinks he has had a good war. The Russians did not collapse in the face of active opposition from NATO but became more militarily and economically dependent on China than before. In addition, China has not paid much of a price for its support of Russian aggression. Life is good.

Or is it? Trump has given the CCP a golden opportunity to detach the EU from America. That hasn’t happened, and China’s stand on Ukraine is a big part of the reason why. In the big picture, the EU is a much bigger prize than Russia will ever be.

Like many of the rest of us, MAGA has grave concerns about AI. Will it enhance human capabilities, or completely replace them? If the latter, what will happen to the displaced workers? Will we have to support them with some sort of UBI program, which is antithetical to the reactionary Victorian ethos? Will the programs ultimately become our masters–a sort of replacement God? Nobody knows.

Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care. A reactionary to the core in most other ways, he is fully on board with a sweeping AI deregulatory program. That, along with his support of the American tech companies in their battles with foreign governments, is why his alliance with tech has endured to date.

The Chinese approach to AI is different. The CCP is never going to let AI get out of control; tech will always be required to meet the needs of the government. That means, in the end, we are likely to “win” the race for AGI with the Chinese. The fruits of that “victory” could be very poisonous, indeed.

Kamala Harris thinks she lost because her campaign didn’t have enough time. She’s wrong. She lost because the American people decided that the Biden economy was terrible, even though it wasn’t, and because she wasn’t a plausible agent of dramatic change. That left her without any arguments except the horrors of a prospective Trump presidency; in the end, that wasn’t enough.

Harris could have done some things better. She could have come up with a more ambitious agenda to distinguish herself from her boss, for example. But would the public have believed it? If she had run as the second coming of Bernie Sanders, would the voters have embraced her program, given the size of the deficit, the inflation numbers, and high interest rates, to say nothing of the lack of votes for such a program in the Senate?

The answer to those questions is no. If the Democrats are to win in 2028, they will need an economic plan that deals realistically with the economic and fiscal constraints of the day. If the plan includes a significant expansion of the welfare state, it will also have to include tax increases, and not just on the wealthy.

In the Douthat interview referenced in my last post, the Trump bureaucrat also argued that admissions and hiring practices should be based on merit, and that universities should be required to provide diversity in viewpoints, not race. Are these ideas workable, and are they logically consistent?

As to admissions and “merit,” this could presumably be accomplished by relying solely on test scores. That assumes, of course, that “merit” can be determined by test scores, and that unusual abilities in particular fields don’t count. In the real world, that wouldn’t make sense. “Merit” is a far more subjective concept than that.

There is no obvious objective way to determine “merit” in hiring. As to the creation of diverse viewpoints, how is that to be done? Would prospective students and faculty members be required to check a box identifying themselves as MAGA supporters? Would essays be reviewed for MAGA content? What if the applicant was oversimplifying his views, or even lying? If someone with a high test score wasn’t a MAGA man, would his place be taken by a lower scorer with MAGA bona fides? Wouldn’t that be a form of affirmative action for reactionaries?

Ron DeSantis dealt with this problem with New College by starting a baseball team, the assumption being that the team members would be conservative straight white guys who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for admission. That approach won’t work for large elite universities. Trump is heading for a right-wing version of affirmative action, possibly using preferences for rural residents as a proxy for reactionary politics.

A federal bureaucrat largely responsible for Trump’s war on the universities is Ross Douthat’s guest in this week’s “Interesting Times.” Practically the first words out of her mouth are that Trump wants to put an end to the culture of victimization in higher education. Does that make sense?

Only if you’re a comedian. Trump’s entire political brand is built on the sense of victimization he shares with his angry white followers. When he complains about “victimization,” he means identifying the wrong people–ethnic minorities, women, and LGBTQ people, not white Christians–as victims.

Trump demands that Comey be prosecuted. The US Attorney in Virginia, a seasoned professional, investigates the matter and concludes there is insufficient evidence for a successful prosecution. Trump then replaces him with a woman who served as his personal lawyer; she has never prosecuted a case in her life. With the clock ticking, the new US Attorney personally takes the case to a grand jury and secures an indictment. What could go wrong?

Just about everything. The Trump/James II analogy really applies here, except that Trump can’t rely on Judge Jeffreys to do his dirty work. Even without much knowledge of the merits of the case, I am willing to predict that it will be a spectacular fail sooner or later, and that Trump will deservedly take the blame.

Violent crime rates have been falling dramatically over the last few years, but you would never know it by watching local TV news programs. “If it bleeds, it leads” is still the organizing principle behind local news. As a result, Americans are terrified of crime, particularly of the black and urban kind.

That’s why Trump has some traction on crime, even if he is far more Bruce Wayne than Batman in the real world. I’m not sure there is anything the left can really do about it, either.

Donald Trump clearly doesn’t care about Ukraine. He may well not care about Taiwan. But as the self-appointed boss of the Western Hemisphere, he naturally cares quite a lot about Venezuela. As a result, he has parked military assets around Venezuela under the pretext of fighting drug smugglers; the real purpose of this is to threaten Maduro and hope he goes away.

He won’t comply. Then what? Regime change will require direct military action against Venezuela, probably including an invasion. I’m not sure “America First” goes quite that far, but we’ll see.

J: Why are you looking so down, Alex?

H: It’s that idiot Trump and his war on free speech. What he really wants is to limit free speech to morons who worship him.

J: But you supported the Sedition Act! Why are you so upset about Trump?

H: I wasn’t responsible for the Sedition Act–that was my party, not me. I was a progressive for my day on free speech. I was the lawyer on an important free speech case before free speech was a thing.

J: That’s not what I heard. Some historians say you were a big supporter of the Act.

H: I’ll let the historians work that one out. Anyway, your hands aren’t exactly clean, either.

J: What do you mean?

H: First of all, you used public funds to set up an opposition newspaper when you were in the cabinet.

J: Guilty as charged, but at least I was on the side of free speech, even if you didn’t like it.

H: And of course, your slaveholder buddies, and their Jim Crow descendants, did everything they could to prevent any public discussion of the rights of racial minorities in the South. First it was just in the South, and then they made it a national cause.

J: That was my friends, not me.

H: The New York Times v. Sullivan case only came about because your white racist populist friends wanted to muzzle any discussion of the Civil Rights Movement. It is proof of the proper limits on democracy.

J: My racist friends are a bit of an embarrassment to me. But that’s not me.

H: And Trump is presiding over their revival.

J: Which we both deplore.

H: Trump wants to govern the republic of ignorance. He thinks some fool with no credentials on the internet has more expertise than a real expert. Guess how that will turn out?

J: I never dreamed that populism would come to that.

H: Can we at least agree that Trump needs to go?

J: I’m on board with that.

Donald Trump read the room at the UN yesterday and decided the best way to promote American interests was to insult virtually everyone there. He might as well have been at one of his more deranged campaign rallies.

The undiplomatic offensive rolls on! Even Kaiser Wilhelm II would have resisted that temptation.

It used to be that the Democrats would keep the government running through the use of “clean” continuing resolutions, while the GOP would demand policy concessions in exchange for their support. Today, the shoe is on the other foot. It is the Democrats who are demanding concessions in the face of GOP calls for a clean CR. Is this pure hypocrisy, or is something else going on?

Two things have changed the dynamic between the two parties. First, the Republicans, previously the supporters of limited government, no longer want to shut it down because Trump sees it as an indispensable tool to crush his opponents. Second, Trump only views appropriations as suggestions from Congress; he will spend the money given to him any way he pleases. In that sense, there is no longer any such thing as a “clean” CR.