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“Make America Great Again” has been endlessly mocked, imitated, and parodied.  That is proof of its success;  it is the perfect Reactionary slogan.  Why?

Let’s break it down word by word:

1.  “Make”:  It’s up to us;  it’s a question of will.  That’s an approach that would appeal to the far right.
2.  “America”:  We’re talking about the collective, not individuals, much as the “Chinese dream” differs from the “American dream.”  Reactionaries are not libertarians;  they want a strong state that produces benefits for the right kind of people and punishes the rest.
3. “Great”:  Reactionaries probably differ somewhat on what makes America “great,” but the word is vague enough to encompass anything you want.  It can be the English language, baseball, fundamentalist religion, white people, or whatever.  In Trump’s case, we know what it means–military and economic power.
4.  “Again”:  When was America last great?  Reactionaries disagree.  Many would say it was during the 1950’s; some would go back to Calvin Coolidge; some might say the Taft administration; the most extreme would even go as far as Buchanan.  The slogan doesn’t make you choose.  You can read anything you want into it.

And so, MAGA incorporates all of the vague sense of longing for a mythical past golden age that is inherent in Reactionary thought without forcing anyone to take a position on when and what it was.  It unites the entire tribe in its desire to sweep away the corrupt status quo.

Originalism, of course, purports to be an attempt to ascertain how the framers of the Constitution understood the meaning of its language.  But were the framers originalists themselves?  Did they think that Americans of 2018 should be bound by their values?

Jefferson was in Paris during the Constitutional Convention, so, technically, his views shouldn’t count, but in practice, they do.  There is no doubt that he wasn’t an originalist, because he stated openly that no generation had the legal and moral right to bind its successors.

As to the rest, they were just struggling to create a political system that would survive the problems of the day.  The issues we face today don’t bear any resemblance to the kinds of issues that existed in 1787.  In addition, most of the legal questions that give rise to originalism revolve around the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, which were not discussed during the Constitutional Convention.  So, on balance, it is clear to me that the Founding Fathers were not, in fact, originalists themselves.

Serena Williams has a strong claim to be the best female tennis player in history.  There is no doubt that, as an African-American woman of size, she has been subjected to a lot of unwarranted racist and sexist abuse throughout her career.  As a result, she has a large group of admirers who are willing to defend her vocally regardless of the circumstances.

The fact is that Serena behaved boorishly during the U.S. Open final and deserved to be punished for it.  Not every episode involving an African-American operating outside the rules is an example of speaking truth to power.  Not every African-American athlete is Muhammad Ali, or John Carlos, or Colin Kaepernick.

Donald Trump once said, and correctly so, that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing some of his supporters.  The blue team needs to maintain a higher standard than that.

Macron may not be Jupiter, but he certainly is a colossus;  he occupies all of the political center in France.  His opposition comes from the extreme left and right.

In the long run, this is a dangerous situation.  What if he fails?  Is France then faced with a choice between neo-fascism and the hard left?

Pray for the French that we never find out.

As I noted about ten days ago, the Reactionaries were a fairly placid lot until the 2008 election.  My, how things have changed!  But why?

In the previous post, I indicated that the principal changing circumstances were the election of an African-American president and the rise of Fox News, which reminded the Reactionaries that they were the new oppressed class on an hourly basis.  I would also like to add the following items:

1.  The Great Recession and the bailouts:  Steve Bannon’s theory, of course, is that 2008 ultimately resulted in the election of Donald Trump.  You don’t have to accept every part of his reasoning (and I don’t) to agree that the Reactionaries thought they were getting screwed from both the top and the bottom.
2.  The Iraq War:  Reactionaries make up a disproportionate percentage of the military and its most active supporters.  The failures of the Bush administration in Iraq consequently fell hardest on them, and they became more vocally skeptical of the “establishment.”
3. Gay marriage:  Suddenly, beliefs that had been completely orthodox for thousands of years became evidence of bigotry.  That had to be a terrible blow for the Reactionaries, and it made them feel like victims.
4. Publicity given to the notion that white Americans will be a minority in the foreseeable future:  No elaboration is necessary.

Once Kavanaugh has been confirmed, the Supreme Court may overturn Roe, or it may just kill it with a thousand cuts.  The result will be essentially the same:  in red states, abortion will be effectively illegal; in purple states, it will be severely limited; and in blue states, the status quo will prevail.  The result, obviously, will be a patchwork.

The questions for today are:

1.  Will overturning Roe be a poisoned chalice for the GOP?  Will women rise up and vote Republicans out of office en masse in red states?
2.  Will either side accept the patchwork solution?

My responses are:

1.  Based on what has happened in red states to date, the answer is no.  The GOP has not paid any obvious price for supporting very strict limits on abortion as of today, so why should things be any different in the future?
2.  No.  Both sides have principles that they cannot compromise.  For the red side, abortion is murder;  for the blue team, it symbolizes freedom and equality for women.  As a result, if Roe is overturned, both sides will fight for a federal solution governing all fifty states.  The resolution of the issue, therefore, would be tied up with the fate of the filibuster (which would be put in unprecedented jeopardy) and the composition of Congress.  A blue or red wave election, or the abolition of the filibuster, could result in national abortion legislation;  otherwise, it will continue to be regulated at the state level.

It is interesting to note that any federal legislation either permitting or banning abortion throughout the country would have to be based on the commerce clause, and would be challenged legally.  The Supreme Court would consequently be ruling on whether either side could bind the entire country on this issue.  If the Court struck down the legislation, in an odd way, both sides would lose, and the federalist compromise would prevail.

In most of what we anachronistically call the “free world,” reactionaries are on the front foot.  From the UK to the US, from Italy to Poland, the clock is running backwards.  France is the only notable exception.

How can this be reversed?  The short answer is that all governments fail eventually, and reactionary governments, which typically spurn the assistance of experts, are more likely to stumble than most.  The public will eventually tire of them.  The better question is whether reactionary governments will permit themselves to be voted out of office, or will go the full Maduro when faced with mounting opposition.  I don’t think there is a single answer to that;  it depends on the personalities and ethics of the affected politicians.

In the long run, the most significant thing about the Obama speech will be the simple fact that he felt compelled to come out of his Benedict-like shell and make it.  That said, there were elements of the speech which call for further analysis, and I’m just the person to do it.

In the speech, Obama essentially made the argument that the white working class is being hoodwinked by the rich and powerful to vote against its economic best interests.  This is Bernie Sanders country.  It resolves the class/identity question in favor of the former, and it lets the white workers off the hook for their bigotry.

The questions for the day are:

1.  Is it irrational for white workers to prefer their values to their interests?
2. Are the reactionary workers dupes, or accomplices?
3. Will the Obama/Sanders formula help win elections?

My responses are as follows:

1.  No.  People are not simply economic units.  All of us have values we prize above money.
2. The Reactionaries are the largest faction within the GOP.  The GOP is built upon a deal wherein the PBPs get tax cuts, and the Reactionaries get welfare cuts, limits on immigration, and friendly judges.  Both factions know exactly what they want and drive the hardest possible bargain.  The white workers are accomplices, not victims.
3. The Obama formula may help the Democrats pick off a few white workers here and there.  Ultimately, however, the correct approach is to tell the Reactionaries that they have an extremely important role to play in this country, that they don’t have to walk around feeling guilty about “white privilege” every day, and that their interests will be protected, but that they are not the default for America, and they are certainly not victims.

The Democrats in Congress can’t check Trump, and the Republicans won’t.  The judicial system is getting redder every day.  Who else is left to save us from fascism and foreign calamities?  The NYT?

Winter came for Donald Trump in the form of a blue wave election in November, 2018.  Faced with a blizzard of subpoenas, he had three choices:  change his ways; resign; or fight.  There was never any real doubt about which option he would pick.  True to his upbringing and experience, he would fight, regardless of what it meant to the country and its institutions.

While he was ignorant of policy, he had a strong survival instinct and a kind of low cunning that served him well during the crisis.  He saw that he had four great assets:  the power and visibility of his office; the support of the right-wing media, which was too invested in him to let him fail; the ability to weaponize law enforcement; and the open disbelief of his opponents that he would be willing to destroy our political system in order to preserve his ego.

With that in mind, he took the following actions:

1.  He launched a “wag the dog” war on Iran and portrayed the war’s critics as traitors;
2. He fired Sessions and Mueller and persuaded the Senate (still held by the GOP) to confirm a bland-sounding AG who, once in office, replaced all of the incumbents with Trump loyalists and criminalized political opposition.  Spurious charges were filed on a daily basis against Trump critics, particularly in the media.  Many of these prosecutions failed, at least at first.  But they ground down the opposition, and the Trump-compliant Supreme Court weighed in on his side.  Ultimately, for most, opposition was just too costly, and it stopped.
3. Fox News and Sinclair were persuaded, without much trouble, to move from merely triggering and owning the libs to identifying Trump critics, describing them as traitors, and inciting mob violence against them.  Groups of right-wing thugs called the CDT (Committee to Defend Trump) sprung up all over the country for the purpose of silencing opposition by force.  When the left rose in response, Trump called on elected authorities all over the country to suppress them.  They complied.  The CDT owned the streets.
4. While this was going on, most of the country simply refused to believe it could be happening, and so remained silent.

The 2020 election was a farce.  Trump thought about cancelling it altogether, but he ultimately decided to let it go on, because he knew that he couldn’t lose.  And he didn’t.  The country was now, at best, an illiberal democracy, and the terror only increased.

 

Bob Woodward, Ross Douthat, and Anonymous have all painted similar portraits of Trump over the last few days:  an erratic, amoral, ignorant wannabe authoritarian.  A man on golf cart, if you like.  Where they differ is with their predictions for the future.  Woodward just sounds the alarm, at least as far as I know; Douthat argues that Trump has been reasonably contained thus far, but that things will likely get worse; Anonymous assures us that the “steady state” has this under control.

Who’s right?  A genuine conservative (as opposed to a reactionary) knows the best course is to prepare for the worst.  What that is, and how it could happen, will be addressed in my next post.

Everyone will be wondering who wrote the Op-Ed.  My guess is that it was someone who has been part of the Trump administration from its inception with ties to the GOP establishment and interests in both foreign and domestic policy.  The better question, however, is why?

My guess is that the real message of the Op-Ed was that the adults are still in charge, so you can vote for the GOP in November with a good conscience even if you think Trump is a man on golf cart. In my opinion, however, anyone who is counting on the “steady state” to keep him under control for four years is a fool.

If I were in a position to question Kavanaugh, I would focus on the mechanics of originalism.  I would ask him to identify which of the Founding Fathers would be of special interest, and why.  I would ask what documents he would use in this process.  I would ask if published letters were useful in determining intent. He would have to say yes.

Then I would ask a question about Trump’s tweets, and let the fun begin.

It’s the day we reward those who work.

A day off for the drivers and clerks.

Capital’s friends

Surely wish for its end.

For them, it’s a pretext to shirk.

The labor theory of value makes sense for hunter/gatherers, but not for a modern economy, which also runs on capital and intellectual property.  That said, in the final analysis, the economy still can’t run without labor, and we are still living on infrastructure built largely with or ancestors’ muscle power.  We should be more grateful for it.

Labor in the US has never operated under such severe political and economic disadvantages during my lifetime as it does today. Demographics are about to start changing that, at least as to jobs that cannot be easily automated or sent overseas.  As for everyone else . . . there are still lots of underemployed people in India and Africa.

Trump’s greatest weakness with white working people is his contempt for unions.  His announcement of a pay freeze for federal workers just before Labor Day is an obvious stick in the eye for American workers everywhere.  Will the Democrats make him pay the price for it in November?  We’ll see.

Enjoy your holiday!