Cromwell

Supporters of Ron DeSantis were waving “Make America Florida” signs and banners during the CPAC convention. What would that mean, in practice?

Well, over the last year or so, DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have done the following:

1. Banned abortions after 15 weeks;
2. Criminalized participation in street protests which end in violence, even if the individual in question was not involved in any of the violence;
3. Banned local government and business mask mandates, and fought vaccine mandates;
4. Proposed a highly gerrymandered electoral map;
5. Imposed new restrictions on trans people in schools; and
6. At a time when public school teachers are leaving in droves, citing, among other things, a lack of respect from the community, Florida plans to put them under surveillance through the “Don’t Say Gay” and “Stop Woke” pieces of legislation.

Those are just the ones that come to mind quickly. DeSantis and his followers refer to this as the “Freedom Agenda.” What they mean by that is freedom for reactionaries and the virus, and cudgels for everyone else.

When Richard II’s government (the king himself was a minor) implemented it, the result was the Peasants’ Revolt. When Margaret Thatcher pushed one through, it led to riots and serious divisions in her government. Yes, the poll tax has a history of being a political disaster. And yet, Rick Scott’s proposed GOP agenda includes one. What is he thinking?

First of all, it proves that he is ignorant of history–not that we should be surprised. Second, he thinks we’re living in 2010, and the Tea Party is all the rage on the right, which it isn’t. Finally, and most importantly, in addition to passionately hating government at all levels, Scott is completely committed to the makers/takers distinction that Mitt Romney made famous in 2012. Scott believes that businessmen create all the wealth in this country, and that those of us who no longer work for a living (or work for entities which don’t make a profit) should just die and stop mooching off the economically productive people. That’s the key to his political identity.

Two points are relevant here. First of all, Donald Trump wouldn’t be eligible to vote under the Scott proposal, as he typically does not pay income taxes–he thinks that’s for losers. Second, there is no corresponding proposal for a minimum tax on large corporations. It would seem that businesses don’t need any “skin in the game” to be major political players in the Scott universe.

After Putin is finished blowing up a large portion of Ukraine and impoverishing its remaining residents, can you guess who’s going to be asked to pay to put the pieces back together? You! He will weaponize our humanitarian instincts against us. It’s going to happen.

Herbert Hoover fed millions of starving Russian peasants after the Russian Civil War, thereby subsidizing the Bolshevik regime. Assad tried it in Syria. The Taliban are putting on a full court press for American aid today. Get ready for it in Ukraine.

Assume the following conditions exist 30 days from now:

1. Ukraine is completely occupied by Russian troops, who will stay there indefinitely.
2. The urban areas of the country have been largely destroyed.
3. There are millions of refugees.
4. An insurgency has begun, along with acts of terrorism within Russia’s borders.
5. The Russian economy is still struggling with the impacts of sanctions.
6. The Russian military suffered tens of thousands of casualties during the war.

Who won? Not the Ukrainians, for obvious reasons. Not Russia, whose military has seriously underperformed and is now tied up in Ukraine, whose economy has collapsed, which faces a united and angry NATO, and which no longer even pretends to be a democratic state. Not Biden, even though he handled the crisis masterfully; the GOP is denouncing him as the man who lost Ukraine. Not China, which has been deterred from attacking Taiwan. Not the “New Right,” which has been discredited by its admiration for Putin.

It’s hard to find a winner here, but the best answer is . . . American hawks, who thought their chance to fight the USSR had evaporated when it collapsed. They’re back, baby! The defense budget is about to soar! Let the good times roll!

So now Putin invaded Ukraine.

Some people aren’t sure that he’s sane.

I hope that we’ll see

That Ukraine will stay free

And the Russians will lose more than gain.

George W. Bush famously promised us a humble foreign policy in his Inaugural Address. What we actually got, after 9/11, was a foreign policy based on the premise that liberal democracies could not exist safely until autocracy had been eliminated everywhere. We know how that turned out.

The Bolsheviks similarly believed, in the early days of their revolution, that they could not survive capitalist hostility without revolutions elsewhere in Europe. While the Communist regime ultimately imploded, the system did not fail simply because capitalism thrived in Europe and the United States. On that point, Stalin was more correct than his Old Bolshevik opponents.

Putin, by contrast, appears to think that his illiberal kleptocracy cannot survive on its own, and that authoritarian regimes in countries close to Russia must be created or propped up, regardless of the cost or the ineptitude of their leaders. This is Bush/Bolshevik thought applied to reactionary–not liberal or revolutionary–ideology. Russia can’t afford it, any more than we could afford Bush.

It’s time to check in with some of our favorite New Right luminaries! Given that they have openly admired Putin for his anti-gay posture (whether the cuddly ex-KGB agent takes his bigotry seriously or not is another question), the Ukraine invasion has been a bit of an embarrassment. How are they handling it?

The consensus seems to be to convince us that they are foreign policy realists, not pro-Putin bootlickers. They don’t support the invasion, but they fear the consequences of doing much about it. Furthermore, they are extremely concerned that they will be treated as traitors and pariahs if they don’t rock along with the wave of popular sentiment against the Russians. As they see it, the left is always out to shut them up; the invasion will just give them a plausible excuse.

The second point, as usual, is pure projection; like Trump, the New Right is always ready to falsely accuse the left of the kind of censorship that it openly longs to impose on those who don’t support what they would call traditional religious values. On the first point, I don’t buy it; most of these people supported the Iraq War at the time (some say they have repented of it). They aren’t pacifists or realists; they just want to fight their battles against liberals and gays at home and Muslims and the Chinese in the rest of the world, not against someone they see as a fellow traveler.

Germany has decided to suck it up and increase its defense budget dramatically, both now and in the future. In light of the, shall we say, difficult history involving Russia and Germany, a well-armed and hostile German state is the worst possible scenario for Putin short of nuclear war or a coup at home. It means he will be the loser even if he gets everything he wants in Ukraine.

Ukraine has recruited an international volunteer IT army to fight Russian disinformation. Have the Chinese noticed? If they decide to attack Taiwan, it isn’t just the Taiwanese and the Americans with whom they will have to contend. This is a completely new phenomenon, and it shifts the balance of power against illiberal military aggressors.

India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE declined to openly condemn the invasion. The latter two are sending the message to us that they demand unconditional support for their military adventures, and that keeping the price of oil sky-high is more important than American friendship. The first is telling us that it still values its historic relationship with the Russians. Whether that translates into neutrality in a dispute with China remains to be seen.

Some commentators argue that we drove Putin to desperate measures by expanding NATO to Russia’s borders. Is that correct? Would he have invaded Ukraine if the expansion had not occurred?

A month ago, I took the position that Putin was focused on dividing NATO, and would continue to turn the pressure on and off in lieu of invading. An invasion would only unify NATO and turn European public opinion against him. He must have known that, but he invaded anyway. That tells me his real objective was to inhale Ukraine at any cost, and that NATO expansion was just a pretext.

His Plan A having flopped ignominiously, assume Putin is already moving on to Plan B, which could well be to encircle and starve the defenders of Kyiv. The historical analogies are obvious: Paris in 1870; Leningrad in 1941; and, of course, Berlin in 1948. How would we respond?

We, and the rest of the world, would not intervene to prevent an assault on the city, but we would not let its defenders starve. We would organize an updated version of the Berlin Airlift, using planes from neutral countries in an effort to avoid a military confrontation. Technically, it can be done. But what if Putin, unlike Stalin, shoots down the planes?

The US would have to wipe out Putin’s anti-aircraft capabilities. Americans would have to kill Russians. At that point, anything, including nuclear war, is a possibility. We have moved from Berlin in 1948 to the Cuba Missile Crisis.

“My fellow Americans, I ran for president as an innocuous old white guy who could get votes from identity voters and save the country from Donald Trump. My sales pitch worked; that’s why I was the nominee, not because I ran a great campaign. But the virus, and the Georgia elections, changed everything. Suddenly, it seemed possible to turn America into a more worker-friendly country. We could replace the dollar store economy with a system that worked for everyone–not just wealthy businessmen. Those were heady times.

We got some important stuff done. We reduced poverty, brought back lots of jobs, and improved the safety net. But in the long run, we didn’t have enough votes in the Senate for the centerpiece of my agenda, the virus persisted, and inflation started to rage. I lost a lot of ground in the polls. Today, things look grim.

So, today, I’m announcing a reset. I won’t talk about being FDR anymore. Now I’m Bill Clinton, trying to get small, popular stuff done. Everything I suggest will sound reasonable and helpful to the average American. Then I’ll sit back and watch the Republicans destroy themselves by sounding like the dangerous extremists that they are.

I know this will disappoint the left. I share their disappointment. But what else can we do? I’m not an alchemist. I can’t conjure votes out of nothing. This is the best we can do. Learn to live with it.

Oh, and how ’bout them Ukrainians! Aren’t they awesome?”

In a sense, Putin has made writing Biden’s SOTU much easier; he’ll lead with support for liberal democracy in Ukraine, and get lots of bipartisan applause for it. It’s the kind of unifying theme that works perfectly in a SOTU. It will certainly play better than arguing for patience on inflation, or for bringing back the BBB.

The real question is, will Biden connect the dots between Putin’s threat to liberal democracy in Europe and Trump’s actions at home? Will he dare to lay out the equation Putin =Trump and call for the protection of our electoral system from thugs and opportunistic right-wing politicians?

My guess is that he will decide the SOTU is the wrong time and place to make that kind of divisive argument. While that may be correct, it remains a valid point, and it needs to be put forward between now and the election.

Jamelle Bouie says it is the conservatives and moderates in the Democratic Party, not the Squad, that are to blame for the government’s unpopularity, as they are responsible for the failure of the BBB. Is he right?

Yes and no. Instead of blaming “moderates,” he should name names–just Manchin and Sinema, both of whom are better described as independents than Democrats. Everyone else is on board with the BBB, so blaming a large group of people instead of two holdouts is inappropriate. That said, the Squad is not to blame, either, because its members are more interested in expanding the welfare state than in winning culture wars. It is the Twitter left, not anyone in Congress, that must take responsibility for raising the issues that the GOP loves to discuss: “defunding the police;” misguided attacks on the Founding Fathers; and cancel culture.

As plenty of Russians have told us, this is Putin’s war, not theirs. They were not consulted. There was no outpouring of support for it. With that in mind, what should we be attempting to accomplish with sanctions?

Obviously, the best case scenario would be a popular uprising and regime change. The government’s powers of repression make that highly unlikely. Nor is it likely that Putin will feel sufficiently threatened to change course; like Trump, he doubles down when he meets resistance for fear of looking weak. So what can we actually do?

The sanctions directed at Putin and the oligarchs should stay. Measures which make it clear to the Russian public that their country is an international pariah, and that their government is not as powerful as it claims to be, are also useful. It would be a mistake, however, to keep sanctions that impact the average Russian citizen’s ability to function at a basic level indefinitely. The Russian financial system, given time, will learn to adjust, and will no longer be vulnerable to international pressure; better to turn sanctions on and off to retain the current dependency and maximize the psychological impact to the public.

We don’t have a flagpole in our yard. If we did, I would fly a Ukrainian flag with “Let’s Go Putin!” superimposed on it and see what the neighbors think.

As you can see, I’m unusually invested in the Ukrainian resistance. Part of this, of course, is support for an underdog and contempt for Putin and his imperialism. Honesty compels me to note, however, that part of it is tied to Trump; Putin and his war are a proxy for the illiberalism of the man on golf cart.

It isn’t just because Putin did his best to get Trump elected. It isn’t even because Trump sucks up to Putin at every opportunity. No, it is because it is becoming obvious that Trump and his reactionary friends view Putin’s Russia as a role model for our political system. Constant lies, attacks on the press, contempt for liberal democratic norms, whining aggression, toxic masculinity, attempts to rig the system, scapegoating outsiders–it’s all there.

And the new right thinks that’s ok, as long as he says he hates immigrants, gays, and trans people. What a great bargain!