Cromwell

In a previous post, I argued that Putin resembled Hitler more than Stalin. That statement would undoubtedly have enraged Vlad the Impaler, who openly admires Stalin and calls his Ukrainian adversaries “Nazis.” But how do Putin and Stalin stack up? Consider the following:

Putin vs. Stalin

Ideology: Fascist / Communist

Killed: Thousands / Millions

Unlikely Ally: Xi / Hitler

Lenin Tie: Grandfather was chef / Successor in terror

Invaded Neighbor: Ukraine / Finland

And the winner is . . . Stalin. How’s that Russian Empire reunion effort working for you, Impaler breath?

Imagine that you are Vladimir Putin. Your war in Ukraine has turned into a strategic disaster, but you are still gaining some ground there. What do you do now?

In broad terms, you have two choices:

1. Stop the war when you think you have gained enough ground to credibly declare victory, and make a deal in which you keep some of your gains. Sanctions come off. You then take a few years to rebuild your shattered military and economy and wait for another, better opportunity. Maybe Trump will win in 2024 and change sides! You never know.
2. Continue the slow, rolling devastation of eastern Ukraine and the blockade indefinitely, and hope the combination of the two will persuade the Ukrainians to surrender.

Which option is better? To me, making the deal is a no-brainer, particularly since the introduction of more advanced American weapons gives rise to the possibility that the Russians might actually lose, not gain, territory in the coming months. Putin didn’t take my advice on the wisdom of invading Ukraine in the first place, however, so it is doubtful that he will do it now.

The obvious historical analogy to the Ukraine aid program is Lend-Lease. Do the similarities outweigh the differences?

Not really, because:

1. Notwithstanding its many defeats at the hands of the Germans, the British Empire was still a world power in 1940. Ukraine isn’t.
2. Hitler was a far greater danger to world peace than Putin is. However, Putin has a far greater capacity to kill Americans than Hitler did.
3. America in 1940 was an industrial giant, but a military pygmy. Today, America has the world’s greatest military, and is being assisted by its NATO allies in Ukraine.
4. Ukraine aid is far less controversial than Lend-Lease was.

Still, in light of the ongoing (and totally appropriate) discussions about America’s Ukraine end game, you can’t help but ask some questions. What was FDR’s end game in 1940? What if Hitler hadn’t foolishly declared war after Pearl Harbor? Would the British and the USSR have been able to defeat the Nazis without direct American military involvement? And what would Europe have looked like in 1945 if they had?

The best answers to those questions, in all likelihood, are: (1) he didn’t really have one, other than to hope for a German invasion of the USSR, as direct American military involvement in Europe was not politically viable at the time, and military aid alone wasn’t going to win the war; (2) the British and the USSR would have fought the Nazis without American troops; (3) the USSR would have beaten the Nazis even without a second front; and (4) Stalin would have dominated the European continent, and would have been in a far stronger position during the Cold War than he actually was.

There are essentially two kinds of Trump supporters. The first group, the true believers, are the political equivalent of Johnny Depp’s stans; they will follow the man on golf cart anywhere he wants to go, including overturning the results of the 2020 election, just because he’s so good at owning the libs and expressing their anger. The second group is the anti-anti-Trumpers. These folks buy into Trump’s mostly reactionary ideology, and attack his opponents with gusto, but reject the man himself as being a weak instrument for the Orbanization of America. Who wins this debate in the end?

The AATs have moved on. They want DeSantis, and they don’t want to hear anything more about 2020. The true believers, Trump himself included, view them as RINOs. The AATs have a significant percentage of right-wing pundits, but few votes. To me, it comes down to Fox News, which plays an incredibly important role in the shaping of reactionary opinion. My guess is that Fox can’t tear itself away from Trump, and the AATs will fall in line, because they always do.

The demise of the reactionary theocratic regime in the Republic of Ireland was the result of four developments: membership in the EU, which encouraged the movement of people and ideas; improvements in communications technology; the exposure of rampant abuses within the Catholic Church; and horror stories in which women were denied appropriate medical treatment due to the country’s strict abortion restrictions.

I mention this because the ROI of yore is, to a large extent, the model for today’s American reactionaries. They are attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, starting with abortion rights, at a time when the Catholic and Southern Baptist hierarchies have already been discredited, and organized religion is on the wane. America is at the forefront of globalization and technological change, and the same kind of medical horror stories are inevitable. In the long run, therefore, the American reactionaries will also fail; the only question is how much damage they will do in the interim.

Former clerks for Justices Scalia and Breyer insist that the Heller decision gives governments plenty of room to restrict gun ownership and use. In their view, the failure to legislate appropriately is on the political parties, not the judiciary. Are they right?

Not completely. It is true that Heller (a dreadful decision, based on unscrupulous historical cherry-picking) can be read in a very limited way. It is also true, however, that lower courts controlled by conservatives are consistently expanding its reach, and that the current Supreme Court is dominated by supporters of gun ownership. All of the judicial momentum is running in favor of invalidating gun restrictions, not upholding them.

Within the next few years, I fully expect the Court to find that assault rifle bans are unconstitutional, because an AR-15 is supposedly the modern equivalent of a musket, that state and local governments cannot ban gun purchases by people under 21, and that many red flag laws are vague and violate due process. What will be left for the political system to regulate after that? Not much, I’m afraid.

Historically, Democratic candidates (e.g., Warren and Sanders) have viewed culture war issues as an annoying distraction–the product of false consciousness–from the real business at hand, which is redistributing wealth from plutocrats to working people. Given the widespread (if largely incorrect) perception that the economy is in freefall, that option will not be available in 2022. The Democrats will have to engage the GOP on its favorite turf.

How can that be done? Here are three principles to guide them:

1. GO ON THE ATTACK: If you want to motivate the base to get out and vote, don’t cower in the corner. That doesn’t motivate anyone.
2. MAXIMIZE POINTS ON WHICH THE BLUE TEAM IS UNITED: Use the liberal argument relating to discrimination against historically powerless groups instead of the woke argument that LGBTQ people are normal, which is not accepted by many left-leaning voters.
3. FIND THE WEDGE ISSUES FOR THE RIGHT: How many white Christian women think they should be forced to bear the child of a rapist? Let’s find out!

In short, spend lots of time talking about abortion, and as little time as possible defending the right of trans women to participate in sports.

With the conspicuous exception of “Defund the police,” red positions on culture war issues typically don’t have the support of a majority of Americans, if the polls are to be believed. Why then, does the GOP always pursue them, and why do they succeed?

Two words: geography and intensity. Bright blue culture war positions predominate in states like California, where rolling up huge majorities doesn’t help to win national elections. In addition, the GOP is relatively united behind the most extreme positions expressed by the reactionary plurality, while the Democrats are united only in their opposition to the GOP. Liberals and moderates (i.e., Biden voters, the majority of Democrats) have nearly the same degree of disdain for the woke Twitter left as conservatives and reactionaries. As a result, cultural issues are effectively wedge issues for the right.

To my knowledge, even our most militant right-wing chicken hawks (think John Bolton here) aren’t contending that NATO should openly enter the war and march on to Moscow. With that possibility excluded, there are three plausible acceptable military outcomes for the war:

1. Russia is completely expelled from Ukraine, as it existed prior to 2014;
2. Russian troops are thrown back to the line as it existed prior to the 2022 invasion; or
3. Russian troops remain in control of the land they have taken in the Donbas, but no more.

It is important to note that all three of these outcomes represent a massive strategic defeat for Putin. He has increased the size of NATO, shattered his economy, unified Ukraine against him, and destroyed the myth of overwhelming Russian military competence, all for some fairly useless land in Ukraine, for which he will now have to take responsibility. In that sense, even #3 would be a great victory for NATO.

That said, which of the outcomes makes the most sense? #1 would represent a complete military victory, and would best send the message that aggression doesn’t pay. It is the Dateline option: the bad guy gets his just desserts. Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely without open NATO involvement in the war. The Ukrainians simply don’t have the men and the firepower, even with advanced NATO weapons, to make it happen, and if it did, Putin would probably escalate with WMD in a way that could cause World War III.

Option #2 is more plausible, still sends the message that aggression doesn’t pay, and doesn’t threaten a wider conflict, based on Putin’s behavior to date. Option #3 gives Putin a reasonable off-ramp, and limits the deaths and war damage within Ukraine, but doesn’t send the anti-aggression message as clearly as we would like.

In the final analysis, the shape of any settlement will depend on the attitude of the Ukrainians. Biden is right to give them the weapons they think they need to negotiate a reasonably acceptable peace, but not to threaten regime change or attacks within Russia’s borders.

Hurricane Agatha is currently pounding Mexico. Its remnants may reform into a new tropical storm after it passes into the Gulf of Mexico. If that occurs, the new storm will be named Alex.

It’s the perfect tropical event for 2022–a trans storm! Let’s hope it does less damage than a typical cisgender event.

I used to say that abortion opponents should be willing to pay higher taxes to deal with the costs of unwanted children. Today, however, I saw a headline to the effect that Florida already has a shortage of foster parents. That gave me the idea–instead of simply paying more money to deal with new social problems caused by the elimination of legal abortion, why not forcibly enlist abortion opponents to foster the unwanted children?

If you’re not willing to put your money where your mouth is on this issue, you are, to quote Jacques Chirac, missing a great opportunity to shut up.

I was just reading the transcript of an Ezra Klein interview with the prominent social conservative commentator Erika Bachiochi. Her views on the appropriateness of sex within marriage are so consistent with those of the Catholic hierarchy, and so inconsistent with everyone else’s (including Catholic lay people), that they require no response. Her more interesting opinion, however, is that the overturning of Roe will lead to a productive dialogue between the right and left that will ultimately result in the construction of a welfare state which is more responsive to the needs of women and children than the market. Is she on target here?

Let’s look to the past to answer that question. We already have extensive experience with a world in which abortion is illegal, and contraception is severely limited. Was that world characterized by an extensive welfare state? Was it more hospitable to women with unwanted pregnancies than today’s world? And, to bring the matter up to date, are the red states with the most stringent abortion regulations currently proposing dramatic increases in social spending to deal with the issues that will be created by millions of new unwanted pregnancies?

Of course not! Abortion wasn’t legalized because men wanted to party without consequences, or because employers thought it was a good way to keep their female employees on board. It was legalized because women thought–probably correctly–that the economic, physical, and social consequences of an unwanted pregnancy were unbearable. They will become so again when Roe is overturned, which is exactly what most of the right has in mind. Bachiochi, and other right-wing pundits expressing similar views, are nothing more than useful idiots for the hard right.

For many proponents of red morality, tradition and authority are sacred, and there is no room for negotiation or even discussion. That is not universally true, however. Here are some of the ways in which reactionaries respond to progressives on the latter’s terms:

1. As I’ve noted many times before, many reds are faux libertarians. Their appropriation of the slogan “My body, my choice” in the context of masks and vaccines is a parody of mainstream libertarian thought; no serious libertarian believes he has a right to injure others. Parody or not, this is a gesture in favor of blue morality.
2. Some reds extend the concept of injuries to others to aesthetic concerns. This is the supposed “right not to be offended,” a “right” which does not appear in mainstream libertarian philosophy.
3. Reds frequently break out the parade of horribles to justify their position on tradition and authority. For example, if evidence of concrete harm is necessary to justify moral sanctions, why isn’t sex with animals OK?
4. Some reds make “social contagion” arguments. The idea here is that the failure to enforce traditional norms inevitably results in experimentation and abuses of power which ultimately result in nonconsensual behavior and the creation of innocent victims. The most extreme example of this is the assertion by members of the DeSantis Administration that anyone who opposes the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation is a “groomer,” because gay people are pedophiles.
5. The most sophisticated arguments on this issue are essentially sociological and communitarian. Their proponents contend that blue morality basically turns society into nothing more than a trade alliance, with harmful psychological effects to all concerned. Society consists of all of the ties that bind citizens together. Disregarding traditional norms in favor of individual autonomy dissolves some of those ties and reduces society to a series of pure power relationships, to be exploited by amoral tyrants and charlatans like Trump.

For their part, supporters of blue morality rarely go as far as the parade of horribles described above would suggest even though the red argument on that point is quite logical. They also concede some of the points set out in #5.

It isn’t a lot of common ground, but it isn’t nothing.

The Republic of Ireland was a reactionary paradise prior to the revelations about abuses in the Catholic Church: economically backward; intellectually isolated; and dominated socially and politically by the Church. Today, largely as a result of the Church’s loss of prestige, the ROI is a “normal” secular country. Could the recent revelations about the Southern Baptists have a similar result in American red states?

No, for two related reasons. First, the SBs are nowhere nearly as entwined in the secular political system in any American state, regardless of how red, as the Catholic Church was in the ROI. There are plenty of other options for religious consumers in America, so the SBs don’t have that kind of political clout. Second, the SBs are far more decentralized than the Catholic Church. Any abuses in the Catholic system ultimately implicated people at the top of the hierarchy; with the SBs, it will be easy for most of the believers to treat the abusers as a few bad apples for which they have no responsibility.

It’s relatively easy to create a political and legal system that is designed to please God if there is a consensus as to who He is and what He wants. When that consensus breaks down, however, politics and morality inevitably tend to focus more on people than the meaning of scripture. So it was in Western Europe after the inconclusive end of the religious wars.

The prevailing Enlightenment attitude was that people should be free to develop their talents, pursue their interests, and express their opinions as long as they didn’t injure others. You see this in the reference to the “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. You also see it in recent Supreme Court opinions regarding gay rights; if the record doesn’t show any concrete harm to society from consensual sexual practices, they have been found to be protected by the Constitution, regardless of what tradition tells us.

What we have here, then, is a battle between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment. How do the two interact, and is there any common ground? I will discuss this tomorrow.