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There are two competing economic models on offer in this country: the dollar store model, which emphasizes high profits, low wages, and low interest rates; and the social democratic model, which attempts to rebuild the middle class by beefing up the welfare state with revenues obtained from the affluent. Biden’s huge social capital bill is the centerpiece of his legislative effort to change models. His success or failure as president will, in the long run, be judged by what happens with that bill. Period.

The next few months will be very interesting, indeed. Will a handful of Democrats on the ideological margins effectively throw power back to the GOP? It will take all of the leadership’s skills to see that they don’t.

At first glance, America and China would appear to have very little in common. In one respect, however, they are quite similar—their levels of inequality. Like America, but for different reasons, China has a very skimpy welfare state, and a wealthy elite with strong incentives to keep it that way. Like Biden, Xi seems to be determined to do something about this situation. Will he succeed?

Having accumulated a tremendous amount of power in his hands, he is well-positioned to do so. Taking on his peers, however, is a difficult task. He may not have to deal with donors and lobbyists, to say nothing about a legal opposition, but he still has to answer, to some extent, to the rest of the CCP. Politics may be structurally different in China, but they haven’t disappeared altogether.

My guess is that he will back off when the resistance gets fierce, but only time will tell.

Rugged individualism isn’t a solution for either a recession or climate change, but the GOP views them differently; the party will occasionally support strong government action to address the former, but not the latter. Why the difference?

Two reasons. First, recessions end, while the measures necessary to combat climate change may not. Second, the fiscal measures used by Democrats to deal with recessions do not typically attack Republican core values. Yes, they drive up the deficit, but the GOP barely pretends to care about spending anymore.

Here is where the factions stand on organized labor:

CDs: Collective action on the part of labor is a reasonable way to keep capitalists from becoming too powerful. It is the welfare of society as a whole that matters, not the accumulation of wealth by a fortunate few.

CLs: Ugh! Rugged individualism and entrepreneurship made America great. Unions are basically a conspiracy against property and innovation.

PBPs: The whole point of a union is to make it difficult for us to make money. They need to be crushed.

Reactionaries: Unions are OK, but mostly irrelevant. The real issues in this country are social, not economic.

The GOP position on unions is consequently the CL/PBP line, with plenty of toxic masculinity thrown in to distract individual union members from their economic self-interest.

Having won a narrow Electoral College victory in spite of a 7 million vote loss in the popular vote, Trump was in the mood for a victory lap. He withdrew all of the troops from Afghanistan over the objections of the military. The Afghan Army predictably collapsed within a few days.

When the generals told him that a Taliban parade in Kabul would make him look like a loser, he ordered air strikes. They were a complete failure. The situation was too far gone by that time, and there was no Afghan Army left to assist. Civilian casualties were heavy, however.

The evacuation was a fiasco. Trump blamed Obama and Bush, of course. The rest of the GOP fell into line and praised his courage for standing up to the Blob—even Tom Cotton and, inevitably, Lindsey Graham. His poll numbers did not budge.

They cut you off and blow exhaust in your face. They fly enormous Trump flags. They scream at you about masks. Yes, Reactionaries are not exactly shrinking violets.

Why? Because they think they have a divine right to impose their will on everyone else, they believe in toxic masculinity, and they feel threatened by their children and grandchildren. The future doesn’t belong to them; their objective is to lock in the past before it is too late.

In the end, they will fail, because time waits for no one. Just ask King Lear.

Populism has always been about mass distrust of the political establishment. What is emerging in America today is a lack of confidence in anyone, regardless of his profession, who looks like a member of the elite. Hence, the widespread preference for medicine for livestock over the vaccine in Trump states; even the family doctor is no longer above suspicion.

Why is this happening? Because the GOP has been putting out the anti-establishment message (even, absurdly, in states it controls) for years, and because it provides great economic opportunities for right-wing grifters. As Paul Krugman often notes, it is no coincidence that so many intellectual leaders of the GOP sell snake oil on the side.

The few remaining moderate Republicans have long worried that the overturning of Roe would be a poisoned chalice. Are they correct?

Probably not, except on the margins. It is true that prohibiting abortion will further alienate young people, and may drive up turnout a bit in midterm elections. Since the Trump years, however, it has been abundantly clear that the GOP is a reactionary organization run solely in the interests of old angry white Christians. Eliminating legal abortions won’t tell anyone anything that isn’t already blindingly obvious.

The GOP no longer has any interest in winning the support of a majority of Americans, anyway. It is putting its faith in the Electoral College, gerrymandering, and vote suppression.

Among the GOP politicians gloating over their victory in the Supreme Court were Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and South Dakota Governor Noem. You may remember that the former said that the elderly should be willing to die from the virus for the sake of the economy, and that the latter forcefully opposes mask and vaccine mandates and openly welcomed motorcyclists participating in a superspreader rally.

The hypocrisy here is so blatant that it is almost comical. Your initial reaction probably is that these folks value the lives of the unborn over those of the born. In reality, what they value is enforced chastity of the unmarried, not life.

The Fugitive Slave Act did as much as anything to generate opposition to slavery in the North. Among other things, it stacked the deck against black people, whether slaves or not, by denying jury trials, paying judges a higher fee for findings in favor of slave owners, creating dodgy affidavit requirements, refusing to hear testimony from the person in custody, and authorizing the payment of bounties.

The Texas abortion vigilante legislation resembles the FSA in several respects, and is about as pernicious. Will it suffer the same fate in the long run? One hopes so.

The great state of Texas—now completely under the control of the extreme right—decided to do away with abortion rights, while trying to immunize itself from a legal challenge, by putting enforcement of the new law purely in the hands of vigilantes. No state action, no remedy, is the clear plan. The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, is playing along, at least for now.

My thoughts on this are as follows;

1. If you really needed evidence that mask and vaccine-hating Reactionaries are faux libertarians, here it is.
2. There will be copycat legislation approved by numerous other red states within months, or even weeks.
3. Blue state residents are going to use the internet to offer assistance to Texas women who want abortions. Texas will try to use its regulations to permit civil actions against these non-residents. All legal hell will break loose at that point.
4. Blue states will retaliate by adopting extraterritorial legislation protecting abortion.
5. The right will regret the vigilante approach, because it can be used just as easily by the left against them on issues, for example, involving free speech.
6. The Supreme Court has just made a terrible, shortsighted decision that will tear the country apart. It would be better just to overturn Roe in the ordinary course of business and be done with it. Ratifying the vigilante concept, which relies on the state judiciary, as somehow being outside of the state action requirement, will lead to truly awful consequences.

Che Guevara reportedly broke with Fidel Castro after the Cuban Missile Crisis over the latter’s subservience to the wimpy revisionists running the USSR. Che left Cuba to spread the gospel of revolution all over the world. As we know, it didn’t end well either for Che or his cause.

I think we are going to see some of the same dynamic in Afghanistan. Some of the Taliban leadership will believe they have been called by God to make Afghanistan’s neighbors—most notably, Pakistan—Islamist. The Afghan government, however, will be reluctant to alienate Pakistan and China; its emphasis will be on building a medieval society in one country with any tools at its disposal. There will be conflict and confusion, with the pragmatists ultimately coming out on top, and the fundis ending up in the dustbin of history.

After the army of its ally collapsed, the great power was required to improvise an evacuation on very short notice. Despite some losses, it was a success. Over 100,000 people were evacuated in spite of the efforts of surrounding hostile forces.

Is it Dunkirk or Kabul? The first is viewed as a success and the second a failure—largely because the Taliban aren’t the Wehrmacht—but they have more in common than you might think at first glance.

The governor of Mississippi apparently tweeted a message to the effect that it was unnecessary to take extraordinary precautions against the virus in his state because the people of Mississippi were Christians and believed in an afterlife. Hence, the high rates of infection in his state.

As a statement of reactionary thought, this one is hard to beat. It incorporates the two principal threads of contemporary reactionary doctrine: fundamentalist Christian concepts and faux libertarianism. Unfortunately, neither Jesus nor rugged individualism is a viable solution to the virus; only collective action organized by the government will suffice. And so, virus deaths in Mississippi will remain unnecessarily high. One has to hope for them that they’re right about the afterlife.

About a week ago I did a post in which I suggested half-seriously that the extreme right in this country would find inspiration in the Taliban’s victory. As it turns out, according to Michelle Goldberg, I was more right than I knew. Not only is the alt-right crowing on social media; Tucker Carlson was speaking approvingly about the Taliban’s combination of swagger, violence, and religiosity.

What do you expect from a party whose absolute bedrock principle is toxic masculinity? Praying for divine approval, and then blowing stuff up—that’s the Republican way.