Cromwell

About a week ago, I was reading the transcript of an Ezra Klein interview with Reihan Salam, a right-wing intellectual working for the Manhattan Institute. Salam is practically bubbling with market-based ideas for making America a better place to live. He represents the acceptable face of the GOP.

After I finished reading the interview, however, I could not help thinking that Salam is just kidding himself for a living. The GOP has zero interest in policy. A plurality of its voters–the reactionary core–doesn’t want to make life in America better; it wants to make it as miserable as possible for the 51 percent of the population that voted for Biden. Most of the rest care only about tax cuts and deregulation; they will only embrace reforms that don’t cost them money.

Salam’s ideas, regardless of their merit, are going nowhere. He is just another useful idiot for the folks who would be happy to turn America into an ash heap as long as they can rule over it.

For years, I advocated giving white Christian nationalists the carve-outs they demanded in order to buy time and stave off their more dangerous demands. It occurred to me last night, however, that after January 6, appeasement of some of the more militant members of the group is no longer a plausible course of action. A loud and growing segment of the Reactionary faction of the GOP is no longer satisfied with carve-outs. It wants a guarantee of permanent power, and it wants to use government to stifle the left, the First Amendment be damned.

There is no appeasing those folks; they have to be fought with their own weapons. That doesn’t mean it is a good idea to poke them or provoke them unnecessarily. Nor am I suggesting that the center-left is obligated to advocate for woke positions which don’t have the support of the majority of Americans; on culture war issues, finding the sweet spot in the center makes more sense. Direct assaults on liberal democratic norms, however, cannot be tolerated, and should be at the heart of the 2022 and 2024 elections, to the extent that any given GOP candidate supports them.

As I’ve noted many times before, the McConnell Project works just fine under our current system. For that reason, Mitch is not a counterrevolutionary. He need not, and does not, support Orbanization.

But would he stand in its way? No, for the same reasons he won’t object to eliminating the filibuster as soon as a national abortion ban becomes a realistic possibility; he prizes party unity over everything, because it is the key to remaining in power. Orbanization may not be necessary for his agenda, but it is not inconsistent with the agenda. And so, if and when the time comes, he will be on board.

In other words, if a newly elected President Trump decides to take actions that are clearly unconstitutional in order to stifle dissent in 2025, don’t expect any help from Mitch. He will just change the subject and talk about how awful the libs are.

McConnell has acknowledged that a Senate vote on a nationwide abortion ban is “possible,” but he says he will oppose abolishing the filibuster to accommodate it. Why shouldn’t we believe him?

Because he values party unity over the filibuster. A House in which the GOP has a majority is going to pass an abortion ban. The vast majority of GOP senators will also support a ban. Do you really think he’s going to stand in their way, if they have more than 50 votes and a friendly president in the White House?

If you do, you need to explain why McConnell voted against impeaching Trump after January 6, and why he says he will support Trump as the party’s nominee if necessary in 2024, even though he knows Trump despises him.

In the end, Mitch will cave, and justify his position by saying the Democrats were going to do it at some point, anyway. He just beat them to the punch.

Skyrocketing gas prices, in a sense, should be welcomed by the environmental community; after all, how better to discourage driving? The political reality, however, is much different. Why?

As with the previous post, for two reasons. First, the prices aren’t actually discouraging much driving, due largely to pandemic revenge travel. Second, the left is undoubtedly going to pay a serious political price for them. Anything that puts the gas-guzzling GOP back in power is a bad thing, on balance.

What this points out is that we need a clean energy plan with a legitimate transition period in order to avoid too much short run pain. Anything that requires the American people to put on a hair shirt, even for a limited time, is going to be political poison.

BoJo and Trump clearly have a lot in common; both are cynical, opportunistic culture warriors with a far greater interest in narrative than truth. For all that, I despise Trump much more than BoJo. Why?

Two reasons. First of all, BoJo is basically a romantic–a figure out of a previous century, like Disraeli or Churchill–who sees himself as a pivotal figure in his country’s history. Trump, on the other hand, only sees himself; he couldn’t care less about America. Second, BoJo comes across as a bit of a good-natured airhead, while Trump makes it clear that he hates the half of America that doesn’t suck up to him. That part of his personality is not an act.

It feels like liberal democracy in America is in an endless downward spiral. The reactionary right responds to the Twitter left with state government repression, which provokes another blast of wokeness, which inspires another round of lib owning, and so on. In the meantime, the federal government can’t get anything done as a result of the many undemocratic features of our system. At the present rate, we could be looking at something like the end of the Weimar Republic in ten years: street battles between young woke people and right-wing militias, calls for major constitutional change, and rule by decree in Washington. Is there a way out of this mess?

Yes–an alliance between liberals and genuine conservatives (mostly big business interests) against the extremists on both sides. You could call it the Macron coalition. It works in France–why not here?

It can’t happen unless the moderate right is willing to ditch its reactionary allies, stop asking for more tax cuts, stand up for liberal democratic norms, and propose plausible market-based solutions for problems such as climate change. So far, that isn’t happening.

As I’ve noted before, the Macron approach isn’t ideal, because it drives everyone who dislikes the government into the camps of the extremists. It can buy time, however, until the old angry white reactionaries leave the scene. That’s what we need more than anything else.

You would think, with the demise of Roe just around the corner, that religious reactionaries would be in the mood to celebrate. But no! According to Nate Hochman, a social conservative commentator, religious reactionaries are in a crouch, desperately trying to carve out a bit of space for themselves in an increasingly hostile America. They have allied themselves with more secular, nationalist reactionaries (Hochman calls them “conservatives,” but they are anything but), and are enjoying some temporary political successes as a result, but they are the junior partners in the deal, and it may not end well. Is he right?

Hochman’s analysis is based on two undeniable facts. First, there was a clear dichotomy in the 2016 primaries between Cruz and Trump voters; the former were more actively religious and disliked Trump’s open displays of immorality. Second, church attendance in America is falling off a cliff. Gen Z doesn’t have much use for Christianity, largely because it is associated with the political views of people like Cruz and Trump (and Hochman, for that matter).

Hochman, however, ignores surveys which indicate that Cruz voters were actually more supportive of Trump in office than Trump voters. It is also incorrect to argue that religious reactionaries are playing rope-a-dope and are only pleading for carve-outs. Their leaders have made it clear that they will no longer fight a rear-guard battle; they want to impose their values on America regardless of the state of public opinion and the workings of the Constitution. They have become enthusiastic supporters of insurrection and Orbanization.

Hochman is right, however, about one thing–this won’t end well for the religious reactionaries. In ten years, there won’t be enough angry old white guys to keep Gen Z under control. The future doesn’t belong to the old. Just ask King Lear.

One of the biggest problems of the current administration is that it doesn’t have an effective salesman. I suspect some of this is by design–Biden has deliberately avoided doing anything that makes him look like Trump–but part of it is due to Biden’s weakness as a public speaker. How can the Democrats deal with this problem?

The logical option is Harris. If she isn’t up to it, someone else will have to step in, or the GOP will fill the vacuum. My best guess would be Warren; after all, as we know from the 2020 campaign, there’s nothing she enjoys more than a good fight with the right.

A visibly shaken Mitch McConnell said the following to reporters after the latest school massacre:

“I’ve always believed that businessmen were responsible for all of the good that occurs in this country. They’re the makers; everyone else just takes from them, and drafts off them. As a result, I’ve pushed a program of transferring wealth and power from workers and the government to them. I can’t say that in public, since it wouldn’t exactly win us a lot of votes, so I’ve pushed culture war issues as a distraction for white working Americans, and done my best to prove that government is never the answer, regardless of what the question is.

And I’ve succeeded! But look at the cost! The social fabric of this country is being torn apart. The culture war has long since passed out of my control, with the extreme right and left calling the tune. Many of our communities are rotting away in the face of globalization and technological change. Americans on my side are trying to overthrow the government. People all over the country are using the Second Amendment rights that I have protected so zealously to kill each other every day. Climate change is threatening to destroy life on the planet as we know it. And most of this is because I fought the good fight for inequality and unregulated capitalism, and stoked the flames of social divisiveness to win elections.

Well, today I’m turning over a new leaf. I will no longer oppose just for the purpose of winning power. I’m going to try to use government constructively to solve people’s problems, and to bring them together–not to tear the country apart to win elections. We’ll start with some reasonable gun control measures. The killings have to stop–now!”

It’s all true, but I’m not holding my breath.

Restaurants have been accepting payment by credit card, for obvious reasons, for my entire lifetime. Just this summer, however, I have noted a fairly general practice of including a percentage convenience fee for the use of credit cards on bills.

This new development is not, as far as I can tell, being driven by any new demands on the part of the credit card companies. The logical conclusion is that the restaurants are now charging for the use of plastic because they think they can get away with it in an inflationary environment. If prices are increasing everywhere, and people grow to accept it, businesses can take advantage of the situation by adding fees and thereby increasing profits.

This is the kind of cycle that has to be stopped in order to ease inflationary pressures. I’m doing my part by paying cash in restaurants and making an issue of the line item on the bill.

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.