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If there is one lesson to be learned from the 20th century, it is that a completely ruthless and clear-eyed minority is capable of winning and exploiting absolute power within a given country.  If you don’t believe me, go ask Lenin and Mao.

In a way, that is what Steve Bannon is hoping to accomplish within the GOP.  He has to know that his Reactionary faction doesn’t represent a majority of voters within the GOP, let alone the entire country.  On its face, his efforts to promote Reactionary challengers to GOP establishment figures will just weaken the party and help the Democrats.  His gamble, however, is that if his candidates win the primaries, the PBPs will fall in line and vote for them, no matter how outrageous they are, out of blind loyalty, force of habit, or the fear that any Democrat just has to be worse.  If he’s right, his faction, however small, could gain absolute power in Washington.

He’s probably wrong, but who knows?  Millions of Republican voters with grave doubts about Trump made him president.  We’ll know more after the election in Alabama.

 

You can just imagine how much CTE your brain requires to make a statement like that.  Either that, or Ta-Nehisi Coates is right, and I’m wrong.

I’m pretty sure it’s the CTE.

Initially, Trump tried to have it both ways;  he announced a phase-out of DACA, expressed sympathy for the Dreamers, and threw the hot potato to Congress. That didn’t play well with his base, which is, above all, rabidly anti-immigrant, so he is now demanding huge concessions from the Democrats in exchange for the continuation of the program.  One assumes that he thinks this is a win-win for him;  the base will be happy, and the Democrats will either cave or lose support from Hispanics in future elections.

It won’t work that way.  On principle, the Democrats aren’t going to fund the wall, the base will only be partly mollified, and Hispanic voters are going to blame the guy who took the hostages, not the hostages themselves.  It will be just another example of how the negotiating strategies laid out in “The Art of the Deal” don’t really work in the political realm.

Mexico

Way down here, we’ve plenty of reasons to leave.

Need a job?  Lots of them waiting up north.

Too much crime?  Gang members hanging around at your door.

 

Oh, Mexico

It sounds so simple, I just got to go.

The sun’s so hot, I just have to move on.

Guess I’ll have to go now.

 

Stuck in the desert, and my money’s all gone.

Trusted those smugglers, but they were just liars.

No water to drink, and my brain feels like it’s on fire.

 

Oh, Mexico

I’ve never been away, so I don’t really know.

Oh, Mexico

Why did I have to go?

 

Parody of “Mexico” by James Taylor.

Everything Corker said about Trump was true, of course, but you have to wonder what he was trying to accomplish by saying it.  Was he trying to burnish his legacy, attempting to get Trump to change course, or just blowing off steam?  I would bet on the last, but I can’t say for sure.

Does Trump imagine that the entire establishment wing (i.e., the PBPs and the CDs) of the GOP feels this way about him?  If he does, that will probably make him and his Reactionary supporters even more combative and paranoid than they have been to date, which is saying a lot.

Ross Douthat, like the good Christian Democrat that he is, believes that character in politicians matters.  Is he right?  I would say yes, but not necessarily for exactly his reasons:

1.  It is common for moralistic commentators to view “character” as a single, unified whole, but real people don’t necessarily work that way.  For example, there are plenty of examples of solid, reliable politicians with questionable sexual ethics.
2.  “Character,” for a politician, is a perception based on the standards of the day.  No one expected Louis XIV or Charles II to be faithful to their wives, and they weren’t.  That doesn’t mean they weren’t effective kings.
3.  That said, in a democratic state, the voters are choosing someone to represent their values as well as their interests.  Having Donald Trump as the symbol of your country is an embarrassment to the United States, which definitely has an impact on his effectiveness both at home and abroad.
4.  I can’t help pointing out that Barack Obama’s family life was absolutely spotless, and there were no significant scandals during his administration, but did he ever get any credit for that from right-wing moralizers?  Nooooooo!  Most of them prefer Trump.

 

Trump and Nixon are, of course, the most corrupt and divisive presidents in anyone’s memory.  But how do they stack up against each other?  Here they are:

                                  Nixon            v.          Trump

Party                          GOP                            GOP

Media Enemy          Dan Rather                Katy Tur

Asian Issue               Vietnam                     North Korea

Russia Gambit          Detente                      Election

Building/Corruption    Watergate             Trump Hotel

I Am Not A. . .                  Crook                    Moron

And the winner is . . . Nixon.  Take the crook over the moron any time.

As I’ve noted before, Trump will go to war with North Korea if he thinks events make it necessary, but he really wants to go to war with Iran.  Why this is, I’m not sure.  Maybe, like many of us, he still has memories of the humiliation in 1979.   Maybe Bibi and the Saudis persuaded him to drink the Kool-Aid.  Maybe it’s something else.  In any event, he’s itching for a fight.

Ripping up the nuclear agreement is a self-evidently stupid idea that is even opposed by most of his administration; no further discussion of that is necessary.  But what is Trump’s overall case against Iran?  Here it is:

1.  Iran promotes international terrorism.  There was a time, not that long ago, when this was clearly true.  I haven’t seen any evidence of it in years, however. Like Saudi Arabia, Iran aggressively pursues its interests internationally (including subsidizing militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon), but I wouldn’t call that terrorism, and it certainly didn’t support IS.

2.  The Iranian state represses its people.  Coming from the man who loves Sunni despots, this one is pretty rich.

3.  Iran supports the Houthis in Yemen.  So what?  How does that impact American interests, and why are the Houthis any worse than the Yemeni government?

4.  Iran supports the Assad government.  That’s a better argument, but not from someone who clearly prioritized defeating IS and sucking up to Putin over regime change in Syria.

5.  Iran, by itself and through its proxy Hezbollah, is a threat to Israel.  Now we’re getting somewhere!  Netanyahu had a chance to destroy Hezbollah while it was fighting on another front, but now it’s stronger than ever, and a genuine existential danger to Israel.  The real question for an American president, however, is what that means for US interests.  If you regard Israel as tantamount to a 51st state of the United States, the implications are obvious.  If you don’t, and legally it isn’t, the situation is much more ambiguous; in cases in which American interests are not directly involved, the Israelis can be left to fend for themselves, and this is probably one of them.

 

Marxists love to talk about “contradictions.”  Ironically, the Chinese political and economic system is full of them, including the following:

1.  Marxism is a universal political theory, born in Europe, which holds that the state will ultimately wither away and that inequality will disappear.  The Chinese system is ostensibly Marxist, but in reality, the Chinese government believes firmly in Chinese exceptionalism, loathes western political thought, promotes economic inequality, and has absolutely no interest in withering away.
2.  “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is actually capitalism in which the state picks and heavily supports winners through protectionist regulation, subsidies, and the unequal application of the law.
3.  The Chinese government believes in economic growth above all other values except political stability, which means that it can’t support essential characteristics of a typical capitalist economy such as transparency, a free press, and the rule of law.

None of this matters much as long as the country prospers.  The government has been able to avoid economic crises with a mixture of mild repression and cheap credit.  That won’t work forever, however, and when the crisis comes, the contradictions will be laid bare for all to see.

Richard Nixon was, of course, an extremely divisive figure.  He clearly despised his enemies; he even made a list of them.  He understood, however, that part of his job was to try to keep the country united at the height of the culture wars.   If you listen to some of his speeches today, he even comes across as being sincere.

Trump is different.  When he talks about national unity, he sounds like a child who has been told that he has to eat his vegetables.  Dividing the country comes naturally for him, because:  (a) he has no other political skills; (b) it’s a lot more fun than mouthing platitudes about unity; (c) he values loyalty over every other quality, including competence; and (d) his temper and thin skin almost always get the best of him.

The whole point of his campaign was to expose the divisions within the GOP.   Things are worse today.  Don’t expect any improvement in the near future.

My wife and I visited the museum commemorating the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party when we went to Shanghai in 2012.  I found the place interesting for two reasons.  First, you would have thought that there would be lots of negative comments about the Qing dynasty, but there weren’t;  all of the anger about the state of China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was directed at foreigners.  Second, the Party openly admits that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake.  There is no such admission about the Great Leap Forward, however, even though it resulted in the deaths of far more people.

The difference revolves around the identity of the victims.  In the Great Leap Forward, they were millions of faceless peasants, but in the Cultural Revolution, they were primarily the urban intelligentsia and members of the Party leadership.  The Cultural Revolution is best understood as a populist movement led by Mao that was intended to regain control of the Party from an establishment that he felt was controlled by corrupt bureaucrats.  The current leadership is understandably determined to see that this kind of Trumpian-style populism is kept firmly under control.  That’s why Bo had to go, and why the public is repeatedly told that the Cultural Revolution never should have happened.

The last few weeks have been pretty grim, so I’m going to change direction a bit to have a little fun.  I’m taking a poll:  the question is, as the title suggests, what’s Trump’s worst trait?

There are so many contenders!  Here’s my list, in no particular order:

1.  Incompetence
2.  Lack of empathy
3.  Lack of restraint
4.  Lack of respect for the law and constitutional norms
5.  Narcissism
6.  Lack of respect for the truth
7.  Ignorance
8.  Penchant for self-dealing

I’ll be taking comments until Thursday, October 12, at which time I will announce the “winner.”  Don’t feel bound by my list; all entries will be accepted.

I went to Puerto Rico bearing paper towels!  Call me Lord Bountiful!

Once upon a time, the internet seemed like magic.  Today, it has been overrun by trolls, bullies, and hackers.  Every time you get on line, you’re putting yourself in danger.  Something needs to be done to get this under control.

Is this China or the US?  The rationale for regulation here is essentially the same as the Chinese government’s justification for the Great Firewall.  One would hope that we can find a more suitable middle ground, and soon.

Life in the time of Trump.

Another shooting spree.

The NRA

And all they say

Just drives me up a tree.

It’s happened lots of times before.

It’s bound to come again.

You needn’t ask how many more.

We’re nowhere near the end.

 

Note:  It was reported that Bill O’Reilly said on his blog that incidents like this are “the price of freedom.”  I probably should be indignant about that, but I’m not, because from the NRA’s perspective, he’s just telling an inconvenient truth.  To some people, gun ownership is such an empowering experience that a few massacres here and there are nothing more or less than acceptable collateral damage:  just like the relationship between hurricane victims and fossil fuel industry workers.