Category: Uncategorized

I hate to agree with Ted Cruz about anything, but I would have to concur with his comments about the NBA’s willingness to suck up to the Chinese. Of course, like the rest of the GOP, Cruz has no problem selling his soul to Trump, but that’s a story for another day.

What this episode illustrates is that there are two economic powerhouses in the world, both of which use coercion to get what they want. In our case, the primary tool is economic sanctions; in theirs, it is the threat of consumer boycotts. Both work, but only up to a point. There will always be some who can either game the system or defy it.

On the DOJ head known as Barr.

In Trump’s firmament he’s a big star.

He’s searching for crooks.

He really should look

In the White House, ‘cause that’s where they are.

But it’s not here yet. Enjoy the fall. It’s beautiful, and poignant, and it’s what we’ve got, at least for now.

Bernie is having heart problems. Should the electorate hold that, and by extension his age, against him?

Yes and no. Yes, his health, and the health of the other candidates, is clearly a legitimate issue in the campaign. Yes, I would prefer a younger nominee in order to emphasize the contrast with Trump if everything else was equal. But no, all of the first tier Democratic candidates, as well as Trump, are in their seventies, so age in and of itself should not be a factor after the rest of the Democrats have fallen away.

A note to my readers: I will be on vacation until 10/18, so posting will be irregular for the next two weeks.

David Brooks interviews a fictional “Flyover Man” in today’s NYT and discovers, to everyone’s surprise, that he sounds like a blue collar version of–wait for it–David Brooks! He’s a sociologist, not a bigot. He’s worried about his job, and about the crumbling social infrastructure in his red state. He credits Trump for caring about him, and blames uncaring liberal elites for the decline of his community. He’s going to vote for Trump again in 2020 in spite of the man’s obvious shortcomings.

A more realistic interview would go something like this:

C: Why do you support Trump?

FM: Because he’s on my side. He knows white Christian men like me made America great. He’s fighting the illegal immigrants and the lazy minorities and the noisy women who want cuts in line. He’ll keep me safe against those people.

C: But Trump doesn’t care about you. He tried to take away your health insurance. He stuffed his cabinet with billionaires, and gave the wealthy a big tax cut. He’s never been a real Christian. He inherited a huge fortune from his dad, and screwed workers over on his way to the top. Why do you support him?

FM: Because he’s on my side. Just like I said.

C: But what exactly has he done for you? All he’s done is eliminate regulations that help working people and give money to rich people.

FM: Are you #@$#@ deaf? He’s on my side. He knows who the enemy is, and he’s fighting as hard as he can. That’s all that matters.

Brooks takes the position that the Democrats don’t say anything to address Flyover Man’s problems; they’re all just obsessed with Trump. In reality, the Democratic candidates for president have done little but talk about Flyover Man’s issues, and are proposing to address them through progressive changes to the tax code, new spending programs, and vastly increased protections for labor, including a higher minimum wage.

The real issue here is that the Democrats view Flyover Man’s problems primarily in economic terms, and Brooks doesn’t accept that, because he’s a Republican. He thinks America is spiritually sick, and that the illness is largely the result of liberal values. That’s the reason he says the Democrats aren’t doing anything to help the poor guy against all of the evidence to the contrary.

Historically, Communist leaders have typically preferred dealing with hardheaded American businessmen and right-wing politicians over left-leaning idealists and intellectuals, because they found the former group to be more predictable, more willing to reach mutually beneficial agreements, and less annoying over human rights issues. As a result, a fairly substantial number of people in China looked forward to Donald Trump’s presidency; for all of his obvious foibles, here was a man who enjoyed doing deals, and could be easily manipulated.

That was then, and this is now. In practice, the Chinese have found that Trump is completely capricious, largely because he himself has no idea what he wants. Hence, the long and pointless trade war, and the danger of worse to come.

Would the Chinese rather have Warren or Biden? It’s a mixed bag. Trump is discrediting American leadership with our allies and making their system look more attractive to the rest of the world. In addition, Warren in particular would undoubtedly make human rights a much bigger irritant in our bilateral relations. On the other hand, the trade war is undoubtedly hurting their economy, and a Democrat might put an end to it. The likelihood of stumbling blindly into World War III would also be much lower.

My guess is that they choose not to choose, and will remain neutral, both in private and in public. That’s what I would do in their position.

William Barr is a right-wing ideologue, a master of spin, and a pusher of envelopes. He answers, in theory, to both the president and the American people, but for his purposes, only the former really matters. As a result, he is running around the world trying to get friendly foreign leaders to provide evidentiary support for a conspiracy theory about American intelligence services and the 2016 election that is ridiculous on its face. He is unlikely to succeed, but Trump will give him credit for trying.

Barr has some sense of ethics, so he quickly had the DOJ respond negatively when the rough transcript of the Ukraine phone call indicated that Trump would make him available to cooperate with the “investigation.” And there have been no purely political, frivolous prosecutions of Trump’s opponents yet. The operative word is “yet.”

Our system will not work properly with a politicized DOJ. Barr has already moved us several steps in that direction, but the damage, to date, is manageable. Will he at some point cross the line and destroy the very foundation of our system by weaponizing justice in the manner of a latter-day Stuart monarch? We’ll see, but if Trump wins a second term, the danger will go up exponentially.

Like his friend and mentor, John McCain, Lindsey Graham attempted to be a strong and independent voice on the right. Like McCain, Graham was bitterly critical of Donald Trump prior to the 2016 election. But unlike McCain, Graham decided to play the insider game and suck up relentlessly to Trump in the hope that it would win him influence in matters of foreign policy. He was very open about making this bargain with the devil in an interview about a year ago.

Today, Graham is one of Trump’s most vocal defenders, even in the face of admissions that Trump used his office to demand inappropriate political and legal favors from Ukraine. You have to wonder what McCain would have thought of that. Actually, you don’t have to wonder; you already know.

And for what? Can Graham point to any actual successes in foreign affairs? Has Trump suddenly become a neocon under his tutelage? Obviously not.

At the present rate, Graham is in danger of being portrayed in history books as one of the men who helped midwife fascism in the United States. I hope he considers that when, as is likely, he has to vote on articles of impeachment in a few months.

The Chinese Empire lasted about 2,000 years, so when it comes to imperialism, this isn’t their first rodeo. How does the new empire compare to the old one?

The old one was backed by military force, and the ability to pay off barbarians was a key component, but its most important feature was the conspicuous superiority of Chinese civilization, which ultimately converted and swallowed up barbarian invaders. Today, no one particularly admires the Chinese political system. Fear of Chinese military power matters in the South China Sea. However, the most important element, by far, is money.

The Chinese have been successful in buying plenty of support all over the world. The problem with that approach, however, is that you can’t buy everyone, and some people refuse to stay bought. What do you do then?

History tells us that when the investments of imperialist nations are threatened by political instability, they typically respond with military force. The Chinese have yet to face that situation, but it’s going to happen in the future, and don’t expect them to deviate from the pattern, their self-righteous rhetoric about non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries notwithstanding.

The last three standing are likely to be Biden, Warren, and Sanders. How will that turn out?

It depends on whether Warren succeeds in portraying herself as the sensible one in the middle, or whether she continues to compete with Sanders solely for progressive votes. If the former, she probably wins; if the latter, Biden wins, because his lane is wider, and he will have no competition. It’s that simple.

Is Warren capable of moving to the middle? Sanders is making it easier for her by drifting even further to the left. There is definitely room there if she plays her cards right, but it will require some tactical and rhetorical dexterity. It certainly hasn’t happened to date. We’ll see.

China is a colossus. It has the world’s second largest economy, and it is catching up fast. Its armed forces become more imposing every day. It has money to burn, and spends it buying influence all over the globe. Mess with it at your peril.

But China is a poor country, too. Its GDP per capita is nowhere close to, say, Taiwan’s, let alone ours. Large swaths of it belong in the Third World. It is consequently entitled to special treatment from international organizations, such as the WTO.

The rich land, poor land tightrope was always difficult to navigate, and is particularly so today, since Xi is more fond of bluster than his predecessors. The end of this is in sight; the rest of the world isn’t going to cut the poor victims of imperialism any slack anymore. And it shouldn’t; today’s China is once again an imperial power in its own right.

Ukraine was always the big black cloud hanging over Joe Biden’s head. It was inevitable that someone was going to use his son’s business activities as evidence that he is a swamp creature who wouldn’t provide enough ethical contrast with Trump to be a suitable Democratic nominee in 2020. The only real questions were who and when.

As it happened, his son is a minor player in a drama that features an abuse of power by Trump. That’s a big break for Biden, and an opportunity. None of the other Democratic candidates are going to touch the issue with a ten foot pole now, and he could end up as a more, not less, sympathetic figure when it is all said and done. It all depends on how he handles it.

My best guess at this point is that Ukraine will move the needle slightly in Warren’s favor, but not much. We’ll see.

Any Chinese person who is my age lived through, and remembers, the Cultural Revolution; his parents also survived the Great Leap Forward. The quality of his life has improved immeasurably over the last 30 years. That will buy the CCP a lot of gratitude and forgiveness for its mistakes.

Most Chinese people are not my age, however. Young adults have never known a China that wasn’t growing at a minimum of 6 percent per year. It would be natural for them to take Chinese economic success for granted, and to react strongly if things start going wrong, as they will, at some point.

In short, Xi and the CCP are building a monster of expectations, and they are going to have to keep feeding it. Things could get ugly if they don’t.

It is fair, I think, to call Bret Stephens a neo-conservative. He has an intense belief in liberal democratic values, particularly when regressive tax cuts and deregulation are sprinkled in, and he thinks America has a moral obligation to evangelize for them. Limited government and individual rights, in his view, can and will work everywhere.

That is, everywhere except Egypt. Stephens thinks the only choices on the menu in Egypt are a variety of kinds of dictatorships, of which the military kind are the best. Stephens has some qualms about the Sisi government, however. He doesn’t believe Sisi has the finesse to keep the genie in the bottle forever, and he suspects the dictator who will inevitably follow him will be much worse. On that point, he is probably right, given that Sisi has done everything in his power to delegitimize liberal democracy as an alternative.

What is the basis for the Egyptian exception? Stephens doesn’t bother to explain, but the answer is obvious; his overriding interest is in the security of Israel, and military dictatorships in Egypt have historically helped the Israelis in two ways. First, they have no qualms about using force to keep the lid on with regard to pro-Palestinian sentiments; and second, they give Israel a stronger moral claim to America’s friendship. When American and Israeli interests diverge, the Israelis can always play the liberal democratic solidarity card against the Arab dictatorships they actually support, and it generally works.

Does this sound almost absurdly hypocritical to you? Of course it does. That’s why the Israelis rely on American surrogates like Stephens to provide the open defense for Arab autocrats, rather than doing it themselves; they can’t afford to be seen with dirty hands.

Based on a few hundred years of history, we Americans think time is on our side. We believe that events have proven the superiority of our liberal democratic model, and that a political system based on limited government and individual rights will always deliver more prosperity, creativity, happiness, and freedom than an authoritarian system. It’s a natural law of sorts. We are, in short, Whig historians.

That was before Trump, of course. The Chinese, with a vastly longer history, see the world in a different light. To them, time has a circular as well as a linear component. China has been down over the past 150 or so years, just as it was at the end of many other dynasties, but it is currently on the rise, and it is predestined to regain its accustomed position as the dominant power in its region, if not the whole world. That, too, is the natural order of things.

Two powerful countries with the belief that the arc of history bends their way. In all likelihood, only one can be right. It’s a combustible situation, to say the least.