Cromwell

Let’s return to a question raised by a previous post. Does Putin’s vision for Russia more closely resemble the Russian Empire or the USSR?

Here is my analysis:

1. Putin is an arbitrary ruler, constrained by no particular doctrine: You can argue that this is a good description of Stalin, but even he had to make some pretense of being a communist, and his successors were more oligarchs and bureaucrats than dictators. Advantage: Empire.
2. Putin has no obvious successor, which will lead to instability when he is gone: Succession was not a problem for the autocracy, but it was at times for the USSR. Advantage: USSR.
3. Putin’s repression is limited to actual opponents of his regime, not entire economic classes: Advantage, Empire, which featured a smaller secret police and prison camp system than the USSR.
4. Putin personally controls and disposes of most of the wealth in Russia: His kleptocracy resembles a feudal state more than anything in the 21st Century. Advantage: Empire.
5. One of Putin’s apparent objectives is to reunite the former Soviet republics under the leadership of Russia. That was the way the USSR was run, but those republics were part of the Empire, too. Advantage: Even.
6. Putin supports the Russian Orthodox Church and at least claims to stand for traditional Russian values: Advantage, Empire. The Communists tore down churches.

And so, in spite of the fact that Putin served in the USSR, he is more tsar than dictator. The real question is whether his ambitions extend outside the USSR’s boundaries to include portions of the Warsaw Pact. That would be a tiebreaker; it is TBD.

Ross Douthat doesn’t exactly downplay January 6, but he certainly doesn’t want us to overreact. To him, the riot was just a typical half-baked man on golf cart action that had little public support and was easily thwarted by responsible officials from both parties. If push comes to shove in 2024, they will be responsible again. Trust us, and have faith in the system.

Douthat sounds a bit like the Wizard of Oz at times. Forget the fact that Trump still has the strong support of GOP legislators and voters even after the riot. Ignore the purges of anyone who dares to speak against him in public. Disregard the polls that show that GOP voters overwhelmingly view Biden as an illegitimate president, and think the system needs to be blown up to save “Real America.” Pay no attention to the right-wing pundits who openly regard Biden voters as something other than real Americans. Don’t look at all of the right-wing nuts with guns, and forget January 6 and all of the vote suppression legislation that is being rammed through GOP legislatures. All that is a distraction. Believe me when I tell you that the GOP isn’t really a counterrevolutionary party, in spite of all of the noise, and that everything will be fine as long as the left doesn’t do anything to provoke reactionaries even further.

The fact is that conditions have changed for the worse since January 6. Before then, there was no orthodox position within the GOP opposing the legitimacy of the election; today, there is. Every GOP officeholder with authority over elections is going to be subjected to enormous pressure to take any steps necessary to prevent a Democratic victory in 2024. Under those circumstances, it is reasonable to assume they will suck it up and do their duty regardless of their self-interest? I think not.

Rising rent is a large component of today’s inflation. It is a product of increased demand for housing due to the pandemic and constraints on supply created mostly by state and local regulations. As a result, Biden has exactly zero control over it. That won’t stop the GOP from blaming him, of course.

Many commentators blame hypocritical left-wing NIMBYism for the supply constraints. Is that fair?

Not really. To be sure, regulatory constraints designed to protect the quality of life in places like New York and San Francisco do matter. From extensive personal experience, however, I can tell you that Trump-voting reactionaries in suburban and rural areas behave exactly the same way. The interest in protecting one’s neighborhood from the impacts of development is one of the few that crosses party lines.

Development opponents are often caricatured as smug, self-interested people who just want to keep “the other” out. The reality is more complex. The visual changes, additional noise, and overcrowded public facilities caused by some development do, in fact, exist. It is human nature to try and keep them away. NIMBYism will not disappear unless the objecting neighbors are given reason to believe that the benefits to them from additional housing supply exceed the real inconveniences.

“Don’t Look Up” is a pep rally for the blue team in the culture wars. Ostensibly a movie about a comet hitting Earth and putting an end to existence as we know it, it is really a demand that we see through the superficiality of mass culture (particularly on the internet) and take action on climate change. As a result, Trump voters will hate it.

While the movie certainly has amusing moments, it also has the following weaknesses:

1. Meryl Streep plays a populist president who is clearly intended to resemble you-know-who. With all due respect, however, no woman can plausibly play Donald Trump, because toxic masculinity is the very heart of his appeal. He is unimaginable without it.
2. A comet strike is not a fair analogy to climate change, which is a much slower process. That, along with our ability to impose costs arbitrarily on other parties, is what makes it a more difficult political problem.
3. The movie appears to assume that climate change denial is driven by the cynicism of right-wing leaders and by the superficiality of internet culture. In reality, it has two different sources: economic self-interest and faux libertarian ideology. As I’ve noted many times before, there is no rugged individualist solution to climate change, so it is far easier and more comfortable simply to deny that it is happening.

A word to the wise: if you watch it, don’t turn it off until it is completely over. The very end is important.

As I’ve noted several times before, Ukraine, while important in and of itself, is to Putin just a small piece in a larger game. Its greater significance is as a wedge issue with NATO and the EU, and as a rallying cry at home. The timing of the crisis is consequently driven by Putin’s falling popularity and his interest in testing the relatively new American and German governments.

The West cannot stop Putin from taking Ukraine; it can only make him pay a steep price for doing so. Biden’s primary objective is the purely negative one of preventing the Russians from accomplishing theirs. How can that be done?

By making sure that Geneva is not Munich. Don’t say anything provocative that Putin can use with his domestic audience, but don’t give Ukrainian independence away or make concessions that will split NATO. If any deals are to be made, they should be based on mutual self-interest, not on the desire either to avoid war or to save Ukraine at any price.

Fortunately, as far as I can tell, this is exactly what the American negotiators are doing.

Both Poland and Hungary are illiberal states which increasingly resemble Putin’s Russia more than the rest of the EU. The critical difference between them is that, 1956 notwithstanding, Poland’s historical experience with the Russians has been far more dismal. That means Poland is much more dependent on the goodwill of the EU than Hungary is. Liberal democracy consequently has a better chance there than in Hungary.

Tsar Alexander I provided military muscle for the Holy Alliance, a group of despots determined to keep nationalists and liberals down after the fall of Napoleon. The USSR had the Brezhnev Doctrine, by which it claimed to have the right to keep Warsaw Pact countries as, effectively, socialist colonies. Is it then any surprise that Vladimir Putin is asserting his right to intervene to keep authoritarians in former USSR republics in power?

Of course not. The real question is which of the historical analogies is more appropriate. Putin’s autocracy looks more like the Russian Empire than the USSR to me, so I would say that he more closely resembles the Tsar.

To be fair, you could also say he looks like Theodore Roosevelt. The Putin Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine aren’t all that different.

You remember the Marlboro Man: the rugged, self-reliant cowboy. Thirty years ago, he was a nonpartisan figure. Today, he is clearly a Trump voter.

But should he be? Donald Trump is a bully and a whiner. He owes his position to his daddy’s money. He’s loyal to no one but himself. He’s about as far from the quiet, stoic cowboy ideal as you can get.

Given the conspicuous distance between Trump’s image and reality, it should be possible for the Democrats to win back at least some of the voters who think men should be strong, silent providers. Making an effort to find candidates who appear to fit the stereotype would help.

Historically speaking, populism is nowhere to be found in the Conservative Party’s DNA. In addition, the socio-economic forces against it are very strong, so the government’s objective to “level up” may well fail. For all that, however, BoJo seems sincere about helping the parts of the UK that have been left behind. The GOP, on the other hand, has never put forth any plan to help, say, Kentucky or West Virginia. Why the difference?

For two reasons. First of all, the donor class still calls the tune on economics in the GOP, which has concluded it can’t live without their money any more than it can live without the votes of reactionaries. Second, the GOP doesn’t actually have to help red states in order to win elections. At least until now, reactionary workers have not demanded tax and economic policies which operate in their interests; it has been enough to feed them with cultural resentment and nostalgia about strength and self-reliance. As a result, instead of generating and implementing plausible plans to help reeling red America, the GOP sticks it to blue America by limiting its tax deductions.

You could call it “levelling down.”

Bret Stephens thinks that a decade of artificially low interest rates has led to asset inflation, and that the Fed will cause a nasty recession by raising rates in response to the current wave of inflation. Is he right?

Yes and no. Consider the following:

1. Interest rates over the last decade were not artificially low; they reflected a period of unusually low inflation, which was caused by all of the factors I call the dollar store economy: globalization; technological change; free trade; loss of union power; and regressive tax cuts. Why would you increase rates when you can’t even meet your inflation targets?
2. On a similar note, asset inflation was caused less by low rates than by the lack of other investment opportunities in the dollar store economy.
3. But I worry that Stephens is right about the Fed causing a recession by raising rates in 2022. I have argued on several occasions that the current economy is hooked on low rates. Both the stock and the bond markets will tumble if rates go up, and the cost of financing the government will increase significantly. That is why it is important for the Fed to avoid overreacting to today’s inflation; it should rely more on rhetoric than action in order to prevent an unnecessary recession.

Under normal conditions, unemployment is a proxy for misery, and is caused by a shortfall in demand. Under today’s pandemic conditions, neither of these things is true. The federal stimulus and enhanced unemployment benefits gave workers a savings cushion, and thus permitted them to hold out for better jobs, and there is no shortfall in demand for goods, as evidenced by inflation and supply chain problems.

If the pandemic were to disappear tomorrow, it is likely that millions of people who have left the job market for covid-related reasons would rejoin the workforce; as a result, the number of new jobs would skyrocket, and GDP would increase significantly, but the unemployment rate would remain about the same. Unfortunately, however, the pandemic is not going to disappear any time soon. So what should the Fed do?

The Fed is correct to view the current state of affairs as full employment, the new job numbers notwithstanding, so additional stimulus is unnecessary. Raising interest rates, however, will neither resolve supply chain problems nor cool off the demand for goods, which is being fueled by excess savings, not credit. All it will do is drive the markets down and add to the pain of the pandemic. The correct course of action is to rely on symbolism, rhetoric, and patience rather than large rate increases to fight inflation.

We remember the riot last year.

The far right trampled what we hold dear.

They were only a mob;

Didn’t finish the job.

Is the end of democracy near?

It was a political act, inspired by the head of state, and aided by large numbers of representatives from a single political party. It was not a natural disaster. What do you expect the Democrats to do?

Kyle Rittenhouse is a GOP icon. He killed two men and wounded a third at a violent demonstration because he stood with property owners and police officers and justifiably thought his life was in danger. He’s our kind of guy!

The police officer who killed Ashli Babbitt similarly used a gun on a violent, but unarmed woman who appeared to threaten the lives of members of Congress and those who protected them. And yet, that officer, unlike Rittenhouse, is viewed as a tool of tyranny, and Babbitt is viewed as a martyr by the extreme right. Why?

Because the righteousness of the political/cultural right is always taken as a given, so the facts are unimportant. The narrative must always prevail over reality. That is the way the reactionary right operates. It is only getting worse.

The Trumpists have thrown out a variety of theories behind the riot, including the following:

1. The rioters were patriots whose violence was totally justifiable, as they were trying to stop Congress from ratifying the results of a stolen election;
2. The rioters were actually antifa, as no self-respecting right-winger would kill a police officer;
3. The rioters really didn’t do that much damage–they were actually tourists; and
4. The rioters were peaceful until they were provoked by violent police officers. Think Chicago 1968, except the martyrs were reactionaries.

These theories are mostly mutually exclusive, but they have one thing in common: they get Donald Trump and his GOP allies off the hook.

Mitch McConnell denounced the rioters in no uncertain terms, so he can’t rely on any of the Trumpist rationales. Keeping the votes of the Trumpists, however, is his overriding objective (far more important than saving American liberal democracy), so what he can say?

For McConnell, January 6 is a political tornado–a natural disaster whose causes cannot be analyzed and explained. Any attempt to fix blame is consequently counterproductive, and inevitably partisan. Just shut up and move on.

It sounds a lot like the authors of the 1619 Project talking about the Civil War.