Category: Uncategorized

The concept of wokeness revolves around racial and sexual identity, so it isn’t obvious, on first glance, why it would have any relationship to the size of the welfare state. Reactionaries, however, firmly believe that minorities benefit disproportionately from the welfare state, so an attempt is being made by some opportunistic politicians to link federal spending to wokeness. Will it work?

Only to a limited extent. At some point, narrative has to give way to reality. White reactionaries benefit hugely from federal programs, and blue states are net contributors to the welfare state.

I’ve read any number of articles about depressed younger people over the last few weeks. The given reason for this phenomenon is the appalling state of the world today. But is it true?

Let’s compare the plight of Gen Z to my own experience:

1. EXISTENTIAL THREAT: Gen Z–Climate change; Me–Russian nukes.
2. LOST WAR: Gen Z–Iraq and Afghanistan; Me–Vietnam.
3. POLITICAL CRISIS: Gen Z–Trump and January 6; Me–Watergate.
4. APPARENT AMERICAN DECLINE: Gen Z–Yes; Me–Yes.
5. RACIST EPISODES: Gen Z–Police killings; Me–School Desegregation.
6. INFLATION: Gen Z–Yes; Me–Worse.

Are things that much worse today? The facts speak for themselves.

Backed by thousands of years of precedent and a myriad of religious texts, reactionaries believe that gender is immutable and is established at birth. Furthermore, they believe that only heterosexual sex is “normal” and that any other kind is unnatural and an offense to God. State action is necessary to prevent society from being polluted by people who engage in unnatural behavior. Woke people, on the other hand, think gender and sex are fluid concepts and reject the concept of “normal” sex; in other words, everything is normal, and a society that imposes a single idea of normality on all of its citizens is oppressive and unjust.

As with race, there is plenty of middle ground between these ideas. You don’t have to accept the woke idea about sexual fluidity to oppose state action discriminating against trans people. I think that’s where most Americans stand today.

On the one hand, you can make a plausible argument that the government has just encouraged bankers to take inappropriate risks. On the other hand: only the depositors–not the investors or the bank management– were bailed out; the bank’s errors look more like negligence and ineptitude than excessive, out-of-control greed; and is it really fair to expect depositors to know how their bank is investing their funds?

To me, the decisive point is that America is way too fragile, given the pandemic, January 6, a potential Trump indictment, and the pending debt ceiling crisis, to tolerate a series of failing banks. Based on the totality of the circumstances, I think the bailout was the right decision.

The 1619 Project is an icon–perhaps the icon–of racial wokeness in America. While the NYT insists that it is just a needed corrective to the standard narrative of American history, it was actually proposed as a definitive counter-narrative, in which white people are always oppressors, black people are always heroic defenders of democracy, and nothing ever gets better. You don’t have to be a reactionary to be offended by that message.

Reactionaries view American history very differently, as you would expect, and are trying to turn their views into something like an official state ideology. Their story runs something like this:

1. America was founded by white European Christians. The country belongs to them. Black people are interlopers.
2. Slavery and racism are just an unfortunate blip in the heroic arc of American history.
3. The Civil War and Reconstruction were about the unlawful encroachment of federal power into the Confederacy, not slavery.
4. The unfortunate blip was eliminated for good in the 1960s.
5. America has been a land of freedom and complete equality since the success of the Civil Rights Movement. There is consequently no need for any kind of affirmative action or white guilt. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a racist.

There is plenty of middle ground between these two extreme opinions. I suspect that most Americans accept the notion that significant flaws remain in our system, but that our country is not an evil, racist empire. Will our textbooks continue to reflect that position, or will reactionary thought be imposed on our students? TBD.

Some commentators believe an indictment will actually improve Trump’s chances of winning the nomination. Are they right?

Not really. The principal effect of an indictment would be to increase the size of the wedge between the 30 percent and the 70 percent within the GOP. It would undoubtedly strengthen the connection between Trump and the diehard 30 percent, but their allegiance was never really in doubt, anyway. The 70 percent already thinks he’s a loser; the prospect of nominating someone under indictment will intensify that opinion.

The real question is whether any one candidate can win an overwhelming majority of the 70 percent. DeSantis seems to think they belong to him by default, which may or may not turn out to be correct. An indictment will make it even harder for him to filch the 30 percent from Trump. Where are his votes going to come from?

Ross Douthat, as well as many other reactionary writers, thinks a low birth rate is strong evidence of decadence. It shows that a society no longer has confidence in itself and its mission, and just wants to live for today. Decline inevitably follows.

But if that is the case, how do we account for the extremely low Chinese birth rate? Does anyone seriously believe that China is also decadent?

The fact is that low birth rates are tied to regulations, the size of the welfare state, the cost of living, and the character of the economy. They don’t really have much to do with decadence, however you may define the term.

In spite of all of those decades of conditioning to hate Russia, American reactionaries admire Putin and are willing to acquiesce to his territorial claims. Why? Because he’s not woke, of course! He’s an unapologetic straight white man! He oppresses gay and trans people! He swaggers! He’s a Christian! His army is committing war crimes in Ukraine! How admirably unwoke is that?

(Remember, Jesus drove a huge SUV, hated gay people and anyone who didn’t look like him, and carried an AR-15 everywhere he went. That’s why Christian nationalists do the same.)

You might be interjecting at this point that the reactionaries hate Xi, who is also an anti-woke warrior, as evidenced by his Uighur camps and his actions in Hong Kong. Yes, but Xi isn’t a Christian, and he’s Chinese. Fighting wokeness has a huge racial and cultural dimension; it isn’t just about being a swaggering, brutal authoritarian, although it certainly helps.

The problem for the reactionaries is that, if Putin wins in Ukraine, he is likely to be looking for territorial gains in Poland next. The Polish government is every bit as militantly anti-woke as Putin. What will they say then?

If you accept the Ukraine/World War I analogy, the part of America is being played by China, which is tilting towards and providing valuable assistance to Russia, but not actively participating in the war. Could that change? Could China save Putin’s bacon in the same way America helped win the war in 1918?

The Chinese have every reason to maintain their current posture of bogus neutrality, but if it looks like Putin is going to be humiliated, you can imagine them providing him with weapons and ammunition. They won’t provide troops, as there will be no 2023 equivalent of unrestricted submarine warfare against China, but they will do whatever they can to keep the Axis of Autocracy intact, since they lack reliable friends elsewhere. Anyone hoping for a complete victory for the Ukrainians needs to keep that in mind.

The GOP is united in its desire to extirpate “wokeness.” But what, exactly, is it?

I’m not an expert on the writings of such luminaries as Crenshaw and Kendi, so I don’t really have an opinion on its true, original meaning. In any event, it doesn’t matter much; what does matter in the real world is the way the right defines it. That I do understand.

A few years ago, as part of a series on wokeness, I described it as an ideology based on identity determinism which defines straight white American men as oppressors and everyone else as an oppressed group and concludes that everything the first group says or does is presumptively false and even evil. The extreme right has run with this concept and expanded it to issues such as foreign policy, medicine, and income redistribution. As a result, in the eyes of the reactionary base, “wokeness” includes all kinds of ideas that have nothing to do with its original meaning.

I would submit to you that in common reactionary parlance today, “woke” means any person or idea challenging the notion that ordinary (i.e., non-expert) white Christian men are entitled to supremacy in every facet of life in America and, for the most part, throughout the world. I will be addressing this from a variety of angles over the next week.

Even leaving aside the hostility of the blue states, it’s not an easy job. It requires, at a minimum, numerous constitutional amendments. Some things she would like to accomplish simply aren’t possible in the real world. Given those limitations, how do we get from Point A to close to Point B?

Since the blue states would never approve the constitutional amendments under anything like normal conditions, it would either require a new convention or a coercive environment similar to Reconstruction, only in reverse. With a vengeful, more single-minded, and unchecked Donald Trump as president, that apparently outlandish state of affairs is not beyond my imagination.

Back in 2019 and 2020, I warned my readers that low interest rates were not necessarily here forever, and that dire consequences would follow if they went up. If you doubt me, feel free to look in my archives.

I’m not taking a victory lap, but current events prove that I was right. SVB would have been wise to follow my advice.

Entitlements will be another tough one for MTG. On the one hand, a principled reactionary should oppose them on the ground that they represented a huge and unwarranted expansion of federal power; on the other hand, the reactionary base is largely dependent on, and strongly supports, Social Security and Medicare. The notion of multiple entitlement systems, based on individual states, is almost certainly unworkable, and retired reactionaries in red states would lose the enormous subsidy they receive from wealthier blue state taxpayers. What should she do?

This nut is just too hard to crack. Social Security and Medicare will have to be kept as is to keep the elderly reactionaries on board.

Donald Trump has the unconditional love of about 30 percent of the GOP electorate. It would follow that the logical approach for his challengers is to wrap up the other 70 percent. DeSantis, however, is determined to compete for the 30 percent; he is positioning himself as an even harder right alternative to Trump. It seems suicidal. Why is he doing it?

I think he is basing his campaign on these premises:

1. There are no other candidates in the race with enough appeal to sweep the 70 percent. He will ultimately be perceived as the only plausible alternative to Trump. As a result, the 70 percent will fall to him by default.
2. Mirroring Trump’s prejudices (policies is too strong a word) is the best way to keep his voters on board after the primaries are over.
3. Running on the extreme right won’t hurt him during the general election, either because the state of the country will be so lousy, the voting public will vote for anyone but Biden, or because Biden’s age will catch up with him during the final sprint.

All of these assumptions are debatable, to say the least. He could be right, but the odds are against him.

Reactionaries love tariffs, so in general, red states are more protectionist than blue states. That rule of thumb is not universal, however; states with large agricultural export businesses support free trade, while some blue states (think Michigan here) lean protectionist. In addition, the very notion of individual states imposing tariffs sounds unworkable. How would MTG respond?

I’m afraid she would have to settle for the status quo on this one. The only entity that realistically has the ability to handle trade issues is the federal government.