Cromwell

Viktor Orban thinks the EU should leave Hungary free to deal with issues such as LGBTQ rights and immigration. What does history tell us about Hungary and sovereignty?

There is very little precedent for a genuinely sovereign Hungarian state over the last 500 years. Hungary was a battleground between the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs for centuries. When the Hapsburgs won the war, they took control over the Hungarian lands. A Hungarian attempt to win independence that started in 1848 was a miserable failure. The creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867 gave Hungary a much greater degree of autonomy (as well as control over other ethnic groups in the Empire), but not independence. A much smaller Hungary was genuinely sovereign between the wars, but was swallowed up by the advance of the Red Army during World War II. Finally, Hungary agreed to give up a substantial amount of its right to self-rule in exchange for money and protection when it joined NATO and the EU after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR.

Hungary simply doesn’t have the economic or military strength to stand on its own. That’s why Orban insists on being both a beggar and a chooser. In the end, that’s unsustainable; he will have to live within the limits of the EU and NATO or learn to get along without them.

Experience tells us that America will not operate as a stable and productive liberal democracy in the absence of a reasonable and constructive center-right political party. Unfortunately, that is not on offer right now. The real question with the current GOP is whether it wants to completely destroy American liberal democracy as we have known it, or whether it is willing to live with the constraints of the McConnell Project (free, but gerrymandered elections, with a reactionary Supreme Court severely limiting the power of any Democratic administration).

Donald Trump is the spokesman for the “burn it down” crowd. There is a narrow path for a McConnell Project candidate to defeat him in the 2024 primaries. It includes criticism of Trump’s outrageous, but largely performative, behavior in office and support for NATO and Ukraine. Fox News and the WSJ are clearly open to this kind of campaign. Is there a viable GOP candidate with the intestinal fortitude to try it?

The leadership of the GOP pretty clearly believes that party unity is the road to power, that picking a presidential candidate other than Trump will split off the extremists and thereby make party unity impossible, and that winning power is more important than saving liberal democracy. In the face of that sentiment, do you really think DeSantis, Cotton, Cruz, Hawley, or any of the other wannabes would have the nerve to take on the man on golf cart?

Me, neither. We’ll see.

Like Putin, Viktor Orban has made much of his opposition to the LGBTQ community. Is there anything in Hungary’s history which suggests its culture is unique on that issue, so the EU should cut it some slack?

Not that I can see. Orban’s position is based on political opportunism, not principle.

The country had just survived a war and a pandemic and was ready to move on. The times were turbulent, however. Crime increased, partly as the result of a major constitutional change that put unprecedented pressure on law enforcement. The culture war between white, Protestant, rural America and the more ethnically diverse cities became more intense and figured heavily in national elections. Religion and science came to be viewed as enemies, rather than complementary ways of looking at the world. New limits were placed on immigrants, who were now seen as a threat, rather than an asset, to a still-growing country. America did its best to withdraw from the rest of the world, while in Europe and Asia, extreme nationalist forces were becoming more visible and aggressive.

Is it the 1920s or the 2020s? One thing is for sure: we have been here before.

I was not aware of this before, but according to the NYT, the IRA includes language which makes it clear that greenhouse gases are “pollutants” and that the executive branch has the authority to regulate them.

This is a clear effort to address the Supreme Court and its “major questions” assault on climate change regulations. Take that, Mr. Chief Justice! You’re going to have a hard time working around that one.

The “Gang of Eight,” a group of legislative leaders from both parties which includes McCarthy and McConnell, is pressing the DOJ for more information about the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. One has to assume the information they are seeking would include the identity of any informants involved in the search.

Trump would, of course, dearly love to have that information. If it is ultimately given to the “Gang,” they would have to promise not to share it with him. Mitch would keep that promise. But do you really believe that McCarthy would, given his track record of maintaining party unity by sucking up to the man on golf cart no matter what he does?

Me, neither. That’s why Mitch and Kevin are fundamentally different, in spite of their obvious similarities.

One of the attributes that makes Trump unique is his ability to fuse swagger and whining in his messaging to his base. What it reminds me of, more than anything else, is the attitude of the beaten Confederates after the Civil War. They felt oppressed because they had been unfairly, as they saw it, deprived of their right to oppress others. They justified their use of violence against blacks by referring to their status as victims, and the self-evident righteousness of their cause.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It isn’t a coincidence that the Confederacy represents a large slice of Trumpland. Reactionaries in 2022 aren’t that different from reactionaries in 1880.

Orban’s defenders argue that, the literal language of his “mixed-race” comment notwithstanding, he’s really not a racist; he just doesn’t want a horde of Muslims to infect his Christian nation. Does the argument hold water?

There are countries in which religion is a key part of national culture–think Ireland or Poland. Hungary simply isn’t one of them, however. Hungary historically was neither overwhelmingly Protestant nor Catholic. Christianity as a whole took a big hit when Hungary was part of the Warsaw Pact. Today, by all accounts, there are relatively few practicing Christians there, just as in most other EU nations.

Yes, it is true that Hungary was a major battlefield between the Ottoman Turks and the Catholic Hapsburgs for hundreds of years. Those wars, however, ended about 300 years ago. I am not aware of any great lingering Turkish influence on the country other than the baths in Budapest. In that sense, Hungary differs significantly from, say, the Eastern Orthodox Serbs, the Catholic Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims doing battle in the remnants of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

If the fight isn’t over religion, then what is it about? It’s about ethnicity and culture, just as it is for GOP extremists braying about the border. That’s a form of racism, whether the extremists acknowledge it or not.

Viktor Orban recently complained that other countries in the EU were “mixed-race” nations. He’s right! France, to use just one example, includes Celts, Romans, Franks, Visigoths, and some Germans, so it was a “mixed-race” nation even before it started to take in people from its former empire. The UK (no longer in the EU) includes Normans, Celts, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Scots, and Irish, just to name a few. America, by this standard, would be even worse.

Can you guess what other EU country is a “mixed-race” nation? That’s right–Hungary! Due to wildly changing boundaries over the centuries, the encouragement of German settlers, and the freedom to travel provided by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary is hardly an isolated outpost of ethnic Magyars. Trying to preserve it as such makes about as much sense as preserving the pure blood of the Irish nation after over six centuries of English colonization.

The fact is that nationhood is an ever-changing concept. People with different genetic inheritances can learn to live together and share a culture, a language, and a history, given enough time. Hungary is no different than any other European nation in that respect.

Traditionally, GOP candidates moved to the right during the primaries to attract the reactionary activists, and to the center during the general election to win over swing voters. Trump’s great “contribution” to the GOP was to reject this approach; he did nothing but feed red meat to the base during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Many of his followers have learned from him, and have adopted the same strategy.

The problem, of course, is that the reactionaries don’t represent anything close to a majority of the American electorate. If you aren’t willing to change your approach, the obvious alternative is to change the electorate to reduce the number of blue voters. That is exactly what the Republican Party is doing today.

And if that doesn’t work, Plan B is insurrection. That’s been tried, too.

A recent article in The New Yorker about the fraught relationship between Trump and the military advised us that Trump was pressing the Joint Chiefs to bomb Iran in the waning days of his presidency, and that Netanyahu was pushing hard for it, as well. This part of the article received less national attention than Trump’s statements about having wounded veterans at his parades, but was more consequential in the real world.

Does this revelation surprise you? It is exactly what we can expect if Bibi and Trump manage to worm their way back into office in the near future, Trump’s previous allergy to Middle East wars notwithstanding.

Notwithstanding Putin’s laments for the demise of the USSR, there is good reason to believe that his ultimate objective is actually to reassemble the Russian Empire, as it existed in 1914. His military escapades in Georgia and Ukraine are consistent with this notion, as is his obnoxious rhetoric about the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. But what does this mean for Poland? After all, most of it was included in the Russian Empire after the late 18th century.

Poland has no cultural affinity with Russia. There are no ethnic Russians living there. The predominant religion is Catholicism, not Russian Orthodox. The alphabet is different, and the languages are completely dissimilar. It would be hard to make a case for Russia trying to retake it, even leaving aside its membership in NATO.

And yet, one cannot be sure. The Poles have good reason to be worried that Ukraine would not be the last bite of the apple if my guess about Putin’s ambitions is correct.

Reactionaries think the role of law enforcement, and the state in general, is to protect themselves and their property from rampaging minorities who despise them and their values. By and large, local law enforcement does that with gusto. As a result, reactionaries give it their unqualified support.

But when law enforcement is used against people who look and sound like reactionaries, the picture is completely different. Cheating on your taxes is OK, because, after all, you earned that money, and the government has no right to take it away and give it to undeserving, lazy blue people. Fraud is also OK, because the victims are just too stupid to protect themselves. And insurrection? God made Trump president! The voters had no right to say otherwise!

In a sense, of course, this is completely hypocritical and self-interested. In another sense, creating legal preferences for white Christians is the very essence of reactionary ideology, so accusations of hypocrisy will fall on deaf ears.

Ukrainian forces are apparently hitting targets in Crimea and within the boundaries of Russia itself. Should we welcome this unreservedly, or worry about escalation?

For now, the former. Putin may view Crimea as part of Russia proper, but nobody else does, so anything within it is a legitimate target. Attacks within Russia are also appropriate if NATO weapons are not used and the targets are purely military in nature. Hitting civilians would be an extremely bad idea, as it would tempt Putin to escalate, and would most likely further mobilize the Russian population in favor of the war.

Personally, I would love to see the Ukrainians destroy Putin’s pet bridge to Crimea. The symbolic impacts of the event would be overwhelming.

Assume that it is 2024, and Trump has meaningful opposition in the primaries, some of which he loses. Since he can’t tolerate looking like a loser, particularly within his own party, he claims these elections were rigged by RINO members of the establishment. What happens next?

Two things. First, any allegation that the GOP establishment is cheating is likely to tear the party apart. Second, if the allegations are taken seriously, and even result in some kind of inappropriate action by state election officials, we will know exactly what to expect in November. In other words, the primaries could serve as a dry run, open to observation by the entire country, for the constitutional crisis to follow.