Category: Uncategorized

David French tells us that three words explain Trump’s attraction to fundamentalists: certainty; ferocity; and solidarity. Is he right?

Yes, but he left out a fourth word: minority. Fundamentalists weren’t a threat to liberal democracy as long as they were convinced they represented a majority of Americans. Changing demographics, the election of a black president, increasingly empty churches, and extreme opinions on social media and Fox News have persuaded them that the apocalypse is nigh and that only a monopoly on political power can prevent it. Trump looks like a fighter to them, so his moral failings, if anything, are an asset, not a liability.

The man has now been indicted on tax fraud charges to go along with the previous gun allegations. These are two issues on which the GOP, were anyone other than the president’s son involved, would logically sympathize with the defendant. After all, they believe in absolute Second Amendment rights, and they have been trying to defund the IRS for years.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for an admission of hypocrisy, however.

On the GOP stance on Ukraine.

To withhold needed aid is insane.

To help Putin to win

Is a terrible sin.

If he does, we will know who to blame.

Ron DeSantis doesn’t have a problem with Trump being an authoritarian. No, his issue with Trump is that the man was an inept, easily distracted authoritarian–a man on golf cart, not a man on horseback.

That’s certainly comforting to those of us who value liberal democracy.

Trump 1.0 was, in fact, a man on golf cart, as I pointed out on many occasions. 2.0 is angrier and more familiar with the workings of government; he will also have a cadre of dedicated reactionary functionaries to help him destroy the system this time around. Given his innumerable personal shortcomings, he will never be a perfect authoritarian, but he is much more likely to be a man on horseback the second time around.

As far as I can tell, the majority of GOP senators still support aid for Ukraine. Nevertheless, they have chosen to treat opposing Putin as a concession in exchange for massive changes to immigration law. Do you blame the Democrats for doubting them?

For their part, the Democrats are more than willing to consider immigration law changes in order to stop the bleeding in places like New York and Chicago. Do you blame the Republicans for pushing them to do something they want to do in any event?

And you thought the stupid chicken games were over when the debt ceiling was lifted. Silly you. And me.

If you ask a certain kind of reactionary, he will tell you that America has run completely off the rails. It is terminally ill from the twin diseases of socialism and wokeness. He’s normally a libertarian–a constitutional conservative–but hard times for real Americans call for extreme measures. We need a dictator, at least temporarily, to completely purge the system of the twin terrors and make America great again. Then, but only then, we can go back to the era of limited government.

The great irony here, of course, is that the intensely anti-socialist right is borrowing and repurposing a concept from Marxist thought: the dictatorship of the proletariat. Call it the dictatorship of the unwoke.

The new year could have been much worse.

I’ll talk about the family first.

We spent the winter in NC.

A mighty frosty place to be.

_______

Our home repairs are almost done.

I can’t say it’s been loads of fun.

I call it a mixed blessing, for

I liked the way it was before.

_______

We drove with Darcy to the coast.

We had a gracious Vrbo host.

We crossed that off our bucket list

But my wife tripped and broke her wrist.

_______________

We had planned a trip for June

But with the wrist, it was too soon.

OH, PA, TN, AR–

We went in fall, but just by car.

_____________

Darcy’s fine; she just turned six.

She still has lots of puppy tricks.

My wife’s involved in several hustles.

She’s the brains; I’m just the muscle.

____________

In other news, the debt was paid

But conflict raged, and nerves were frayed.

The blue team had a decent year

But Trump still leaves us full of fear.

____________

So what of 2024?

Too many flash points to keep score.

Will liberalism meet its death?

Just keep the faith and hold your breath.

The dance has already begun. When GOP leaders are asked about Trump’s increasingly unhinged statements, they respond in one of two ways:

1. “Hehe. You know Trump. He’s always saying anything that comes into his head. He doesn’t really mean it. Even if he did, the system has enough checks and balances to keep him from being an authoritarian. Nothing to worry about here.”
2. “So what if Trump sounds like a corrupt authoritarian. WHAT ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN, THE TRUMP PROSECUTIONS, AND THE VACCINE MANDATES???? Biden is just as big a corrupt authoritarian as Trump, and he’s running America into the ground. Trump will save us and make America great again!”

This is complete rubbish, of course. Trump 1.0 was a disaster; Trump 2.0 would be much, much worse. His authoritarian statements should be taken both seriously and literally.

Ron DeSantis took several threads of largely unrelated leftist thought (e.g., support for vaccines and anti-racism), tied them together as a single ideology called “wokeness,” and made opposition to it the centerpiece of his campaign. This approach didn’t resonate with the GOP electorate, which found it confusing and irrelevant to their most pressing concerns. That, along with the Hungarian Candidate’s decision to chase the wrong voters and leave Trump untouched, is the reason the DeSantis campaign is dying today.

Biden wants to make the protection of “democracy” the centerpiece of his campaign, but if he does, he may find that “democracy,”, like “wokeness,” is too abstract for the electorate. He would be wise to make the case more concrete–Trump and the GOP are coming for your rights, including (but not limited to) abortion, Obamacare, freedom of speech and inquiry, and your ability to participate in the political process. That is something the voters will understand.

Many left-leaning commentators have read the latest polls and want Biden to drop out of the race. Does this make sense, in the real world?

Ignore the overwhelming practical problems with starting a campaign from scratch just a few weeks before the primary season begins. The obvious issue here is that all of the plausible Biden alternatives have nothing new to run on. You could attack the man from the left, but promising to run as a pillar of wokeness isn’t going to get you very far, even with the Democratic electorate. Apart from that, there is nothing that Biden has done in office that wouldn’t have been done by any other prominent member of the left. In particular, there are no alternative answers from the left to the issues of the border, crime, and inflation that haven’t already been tried.

In the end, you would have candidates running as younger versions of Biden without embarrassing grifter sons. That doesn’t represent much of a platform or a change from the status quo. You might as well stick with the real deal.

No meaningful opposition to a Trump autocracy can be expected from GOP members of Congress, even though the enhancement of executive powers will be a threat to them, as well. The resistance will come from four sources: the bureaucracy; the judiciary; the blue states; and the MSM. What can be expected from them, and how will Trump respond?

As to bureaucratic efforts to resist unwise or illegal directions, Trump is already prepared to deal with them; he intends to put loyalists in charge of the deep state and will fire anyone who gets in his way. The Supreme Court, which is reactionary but not Trumpist, will be ignored; Trump will simply refuse to comply with court orders that he doesn’t like. The real questions revolve around the blue states and the MSM. Will Trump use the military, through the Insurrection Act, to quash dissent and enforce compliance with his will? And will the military follow orders that are clearly in violation of the Constitution?

Let’s hope we never find out.

Both of them were sent by God to save their followers, and both were crucified by the deep state for it. The difference is that Jesus was only crucified once; Trump goes through it on a daily basis.

The GOP as a whole has no use for democracy, as evidenced by its extreme gerrymandering, contempt for the outcomes of referenda, consistent embrace of positions that poll poorly, and approval of measures making voting more difficult. Trump is an exemplar, not an outlier, within his party on those points. What, then, sets him apart from the rest of the GOP?

Trump’s claim to be fighting to protect the integrity of our 2020 election was pure eyewash; there is plenty of evidence showing that he knew he lost, but he didn’t consider his loss to be legitimate, because as far as he’s concerned, only “real Americans” should have the right to vote, and they overwhelmingly supported him. The fact that many GOP House members voted against certifying the election is strong evidence that a large segment of the party agrees with him. That isn’t the answer to the question.

No, what sets Trump apart is his contempt for liberal norms. He openly talks about firing huge numbers of civil servants and replacing them with MAGA loyalists, directing the DOJ to prosecute his enemies, and using the Insurrection Act to clamp down on political dissent. His enthusiasm for tariffs is largely based on his legal ability to grant exemptions to people who suck up to him. He has said that anything the president does is legal by definition. He is an autocrat; he demands the legal ability to behave arbitrarily and to ignore the constitutional rights of Americans who disagree with him.

That, my friends, is why he is such a threat to our system. He hates both pillars of liberal democracy.

Many commentators, including myself, have argued that Trump represents a clear and present danger to American liberal democracy. What do we mean by that?

Let’s start by defining two concepts that are actually quite different. “Democracy” means the rule of the majority of citizens, however that is ascertained–the devil is in the details. After all, the CCP claims to be “democratic.” The fundamental assumptions behind “democracy” are: that sovereignty rests in the citizenry (not God, a conqueror, or some limited group of people); that the well-being of each citizen is equally important to society, even if every person has different levels of ability; that since every citizen has an equal stake in good government, he has an equal right to participate in that government; and that crowds have more wisdom than any individual.

“Liberalism” evolved in England after the 17th century; it thus long predated “democracy.” “Liberalism” assumes that society is the sum of its individual parts, and that the best way to have a thriving society is to protect the right of each individual to pursue his own development and interests without unnecessary interference from government. “Liberalism” is thus the antithesis of autocracy; it calls for checks and balances within government to prevent any one individual from having arbitrary power, and it protects the individual rights of the governed from the excesses of government. Freedom of speech, association, religion, and the press are highly valued in liberal countries, as are the consistent application of law to all citizens, limits on police behavior, and a depoliticized law enforcement system.

Trump is a threat to both the “liberal” and “democratic” pillars of liberal democracy. I will discuss why in my next post.

She wasn’t just the first female justice of the Supreme Court; she was a genuine conservative (not a reactionary) and a swing vote. Nobody could take her support for granted. Any party who came before her had a reasonable chance, which gave the Supreme Court credibility with both the right and the left.

That’s gone. There are no swing votes on the current Court. The only disputes among the six right-wing justices are about how fast to move the train–not which direction it should go.