Cromwell

IMAGINE

Imagine there’s no Biden.

It isn’t hard to do.

An end to contraception.

Blue states have got the blues.

____________

Imagine all the children

Giving thanks to God.

Whoo-hoo!

___________

Imagine there’s no NATO.

It’s easy if you try.

EU’s imploded.

White Christians riding high.

______________

Imagine Western nations

Beating back Islam.

Whoo-hoo!

___________

You may say we’re just dreamers.

But we’re not the only ones.

You’d better choose to join us.

Because the storm’s begun.

_________________

Parody of “Imagine” by John Lennon

The Florida GOP thought it had the magic formula. Lots of sun, great beaches, low taxes, and “freedom” from annoying regulations caused the state to boom. It was the recipe for permanent prosperity, not to mention electoral success.

But there was a dark cloud hanging over the success story–climate change. Monster storms and catastrophic losses were on the horizon. As a result, even before Ian, the Florida property insurance market was on its last legs. The Florida Legislature was doing its best to bail it out, with limited success. Now what?

Ian is going to be the end of private hurricane insurance in Florida. As a result, the GOP will have two choices. One of them is to accept the logic of their “freedom” agenda, keep taxes and regulations low, and acknowledge that coastal property is about to become valueless. Millions of people will flee the state, and the economy will crash. The other option is to pour huge amounts of public money into the state’s insurer of last resort (which will now be the only one), raise taxes, and impose lots of new regulations in order to keep future costs down. Either way, it’s the end of the “freedom” project.

Then, the question will become, will Texas be next?

Back in the day, when Marco Rubio was asked about climate change, he would reply “I’m not a scientist.” However, as the evidence for climate change has mounted and the GOP mainstream opinion has shifted slightly, he has gone with the flow, so to speak. Today, he will tell you that climate change is real, but that nothing can be done about it without wrecking our economy. The implicit judgment there is that a few deaths and a few billion dollars in damage from fires, heat, and hurricanes annually represent acceptable collateral damage.

Well, Marco, what about now? Your home state is on its knees. It will take hundreds of billions of dollars to fix it. Virtually all of that will have to come from the federal government. Florida coastal property values are going to collapse. And it will almost certainly happen again, and again.

Does that sound like a good way to keep the economy humming? Does that sound like acceptable collateral damage to you?

At a press conference today, a combative Governor DeSantis attributed the loss of life and property damage from Ian not to bad disaster planning and climate change denial, but to the wrath of God. According to DeSantis, God was angry at the spread of woke ideology in America (particularly in Florida) and was taking vengeance on the state. Instead of throwing money at insurance companies and climate mitigation measures, which would be inconsistent with the GOP’s views on limited government, he vowed to redouble his efforts to root out every possible manifestation of wokeness in his state and to make Christianity our state religion.

The portion of the reactionary base that was still alive after Ian applauded vigorously.

We evacuated from Irma. The trip to North Carolina was a nightmare. All of the major evacuation routes were jammed, and it was extremely difficult to find gas. In the end, the storm was not that bad. Probably what everyone remembered most about it was the images of the clogged evacuation routes and the gas issues.

I was, as you would expect, watching video of Ian from the beginning to the end. The televised images of the evacuation routes strongly suggested to me that people weren’t leaving. It now appears that I was right, and the death toll will reflect that.

Katrina was the result of events that were not foreseen–the failure of some of the levees–and the practical inability of many of the city’s residents to evacuate. Ian was different. Everyone could have evacuated, and the government told them to do so; the problem was getting people to believe, based on their experiences with Charley and Irma, that leaving was a better option than staying.

At the micro level, I don’t think you can blame Florida government for sending the wrong message. In the long run, however, refusing to deal with climate change is a crime, because it will lead to more storms and more deaths. In that sense, Florida government, which is to say uninterrupted rule by the GOP– is very much culpable, and will pay the price when residents start fleeing the state.

Power, unlike wealth, is a zero-sum game, so in light of the economic turmoil in the West, you would think that China was the winner. You would be wrong.

Growth has slowed to a crawl in China. The government’s covid policies are damaging the economy and creating unrest. The Russian invasion, which effectively was backed by the Chinese government, is an international embarrassment. Western Europe and Japan are moving away from China and towards the United States. If that’s winning, Xi is probably already tired of it.

Who is winning? Only the Gulf States, at this point.

A Thomas Edsall column in the NYT made me aware of a “Statement of Principles” from a group called the “National Conservatism Project.” The group includes numerous luminaries from the New Right, including our old friend Rod Dreher.

The geopolitical vision of this group could be best described as a collection of completely sovereign Christian nations working in concert, but not through international institutions, to do battle with China, Islamic countries, and, of course, woke people. The domestic agenda essentially is to make Christianity great again. The authors of the “Statement” want to return Christianity to its dominant place in the public sphere wherever Christians are in a majority; religious minorities will be tolerated, but only in their private sphere.

This raises three major questions:

1. HOW CAN RED STATES RECHRISTIANIZE, IN LIGHT OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT? The answer to that can only be that the authors of the “Statement” want a complete reversal of First Amendment jurisprudence. The Establishment Clause would be limited to the prohibition against creating an official state sect. Christianity as a whole, not being a sect, could be lawfully institutionalized.
2. WHAT HAPPENS IN BLUE STATES, WHERE CHRISTIANS ARE A MINORITY? DOES THE STATEMENT LEAVE THEM OUT OF THE PROJECT? Not really. The Edsall column contains a quote from one of the authors which suggests that they really believe in federalism, but the “Statement” itself makes it clear that the federal government must step in if “immorality” runs rampant in blue states. That is an invitation to create a fascist state.
3. WHAT HAPPENS TO THE MEDIA, WHICH ARE TYPICALLY LOCATED IN BLUE STATES? The “Statement” doesn’t address that issue directly, but its tenor is such that one must assume that all left-leaning media would be subjected to strict controls, and possibly eliminated altogether.

Are you surprised by any of this? You shouldn’t be. This is where we are heading.

Three things:

1. Social stability (i.e., no public unrest or challenges to his leadership);
2. A dynamic economy; and
3. Reduced inequality.

The problem is that he can’t have all three. #2 requires a blast of capitalism, which inevitably involves creative destruction and increased inequality, which is inconsistent with the other two objectives.

What does this mean in practice? #1 is the only goal that isn’t negotiable. It will prevail over the other two, which essentially means no change to the status quo unless or until the demands from the public become too strong to ignore.

Mao liked to break things. He thought stability and stagnation were the enemy. And so, he fought for continuing revolution, even against the rest of his party. His “success” was the impoverishment of China.

The next generation of Chinese leaders saw national salvation in economic development, which inevitably leads to a process in which winners turn into losers, and vice-versa. Creative destruction, not stability, is what capitalism is all about.

The Xi generation rules over a powerful nation. It values stability over everything else, including growth, because it has much to lose. What does this mean for the Chinese economy?

In the end, it means a return to stagnation–just at a higher level than before.

Populism, by definition, is an attempt to rouse the masses against an elite that is perceived to be self-interested and corrupt. Populists should, therefore, welcome an increased level of participation in the political process by the powerless.

But contemporary right-wing American populists don’t speak for a majority of the American people. What’s more, they know it. As a result, they make the argument, based on the views of the Founding Fathers, that America is a republic, not a democracy. This is an openly anti-democratic argument.

In addition, the kinds of people the reactionary populists believe have too much power–the wealthy and educated elements of the public–are exactly the kinds of people the FFs thought should be running the country. You can be certain, for example, that Hamilton would have been appalled at the idea of a guy in a Viking outfit storming the Capitol to keep Trump in power.

The bottom line is that our “populists” actually want rule by the elites, but they define “elites” as including only elements of the public the FFs would hardly have recognized as elite. It is as if the FFs wrote the Constitution to give the insurgents in Shays’ Rebellion control over the country. If you think that’s ludicrous, you’re not alone.

Long before the WTO membership, the creation of the export machine, the 2008 Olympics, the construction of the Uighur camps, and the repression in Hong Kong, Huntington predicted that China would rise and seek to dominate its neighborhood. Leaders in the West, who were not that prescient in 1996, are now attempting to resist. Is this a clash of civilizations, or something else?

I have on many occasions described the Chinese state ideology as “Chinese exceptionalism” rather than communism. That is consistent with Huntington. The problem with attributing the conflict between China and America to a clash of civilizations, however, is that Taiwan and South Korea, both part of Huntington’s “Sinic” sphere of influence, are robust democracies and American allies. The very different character of regimes with similar cultures is not consistent with Huntington.

While there is certainly an element of culture war (or, if you insist, racism) in America’s fear of China, more of it has to do with China’s turn towards more rigorous authoritarianism at home and aggression abroad over the last decade. These developments were a matter of choice for the Chinese leadership; they were in no way the inevitable product of Chinese culture. As a result, I don’t think you can say this is a pure clash of civilizations; there are elements of ideology and great power rivalry at work, as well.

It is, of course, highly ironic that the leader of the Brothers of Italy is a sister. That observation aside, what can we expect from the new government?

Four things:

1. We will see lots of rhetoric and performative actions on illegal immigration and wokeness. Actually accomplishing anything meaningful will be a different matter.
2. There will be a significant push within the EU to loosen fiscal rules. The German government, which approved massive new borrowing and spending programs for the pandemic, and which currently faces a recession, probably won’t resist too much this time. When the cost of borrowing goes up, however, the EU won’t be there to help. The new government will have to face the markets on its own.
3. Meloni will probably make some effort to loosen sanctions on Russia, but won’t get very far. She will be too dependent on EU money to make much of a splash here.
4. Italian governments, almost by definition, are weak and unstable. Since it is unlikely that the leaders of the other right-wing parties will embrace their subordinate status for very long, this one will be even weaker and more unstable than most.

The great would-be emperor Xi

Wants to hold on to power, don’t you see?

So he’s put out the word.

It’s already been heard.

Woe to them who say they don’t agree.

The Huntington book identifies illegal immigration and “multi-culturalism” as potential problems for America. It argues that the values we consider universal–free speech, free elections, limited government, respect for property rights, and the like–do not apply in most civilizations. Above all, it foresees that China will attempt to dominate its Sinic sphere of influence, at a minimum. It all sounds a bit like Trump. Was Huntington a Trump voter?

Not so fast! Trump deviated from the playbook in a number of critical ways. First of all, like Bannon, he viewed Russia as being part of a Christian sphere rather than the center of a separate Orthodox sphere. Second, he tried to divide the West rather than unite it. Third, Trump has a strong mercantilist bent that doesn’t appear anywhere in the book. Finally, and most importantly, Trump doesn’t simply argue that American values aren’t universal; he rejects them in America, as well. Where Huntington saw those values as the glue that keeps the West together, Trump sees only himself.

You know how difficult it was to pull off the D-Day invasion. Now imagine trying it without the element of surprise, and with no assurance that you would have control over either the sea or the air. Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it?

It does. That’s why the Chinese won’t invade Taiwan. They will use a combination of missile strikes, cyberwarfare, and an air and sea blockade instead.

What does this mean for America and Taiwan? Providing arms to Taiwan that are intended primarily to deal with a ground assault is a waste of money. We need to be working on a plan to deal with the blockade, which means emphasizing anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons and improving our ability to supply the island by air.