Cromwell

The United States invested hundreds of billions of dollars in the Afghan government and military over a period of 20 years. In the end, the government couldn’t govern, and the military wouldn’t fight. Who is to blame for this colossal waste?

It isn’t Bush, Obama, Biden, or even Trump. It is the American military and foreign policy establishment that conceived the programs and spent the money. Politicians came and went, but the blob assured us that they had everything under control, and that it would all turn out OK. LOL.

The Republican responses to the collapse In Afghanistan were predictable: the few remaining CDs are horrified, and would support some sort of surge; the PBPs will use the bad news opportunistically to resist tax increases; and the America First CLs and Reactionaries will be indifferent. In the end, their opinions won’t matter much, particularly since Trump was as eager to exit the country as Biden is.

But what about the left? Will AOC and her friends demand military support for the Afghan women? Will foreign policy take a feminist turn here?

I doubt it. The left will flinch a bit, but they have no more use for this war than the America Firsters. Still, the issue bears watching.

As I’ve noted many times before, there are two models for American military involvement in Third World countries. In the Korean model, we decide the country in question has so much strategic importance, we are obligated to stay indefinitely; in the Vietnam model, we prepare the natives to fight for themselves, and then leave.

Once Trump, and then Biden, chose the Vietnam model for Afghanistan, its fate was sealed. So what can we learn from this experience? That attempting to foster a kind of liberal democratic regime on a Third World nation with a completely different culture, and then leaving, will not succeed if the armed opposition has a place of refuge from which they cannot be displaced.

There are two ways to avoid the Vietnam/Afghanistan experience. The first is to accept the burdens of the Korea model up front; the second is to install and arm the most competent warlord you can find, give him guns and money, and let him take responsibility for the country. Call it the Putin Solution.

As a result of their excessive individualism and selfish disregard for the interests of posterity, the Boomers did nothing but make climate change worse. The data were there, and the science was clear, and yet, they did nothing. The planet is now ablaze. It’s their fault.

That is the millennial position, and it is true as far as it goes. The fact of the matter, however, is that America is a much greener country than it was before the Boomers. The real accelerant of climate change was the rise of China, which was done on the back of mountains of fossil fuels. How could that have been stopped? There just wasn’t any way.

Are you persuaded?

Here are my thoughts:

1. Biden’s initial response was correct; extending the moratorium isn’t the best solution to the problem. There is plenty of money available for tenants and landlords; the challenge is to get state and local governments to distribute it.
2. Nevertheless, Biden’s hands were tied as soon as Pelosi came out strongly in favor of the extension. He owes her too much to ignore her.
3. The new regulation is not a Trumpian attempt to defy a court order; it is a good faith effort to accomplish a legitimate public health objective, while acknowledging the limits put on his powers by the Supreme Court.
4. In the end, the legal argument will probably fail, but no one can say he didn’t try, and he will have bought some time for a real solution.

Some reactionary commentators argue that the right has to fight culture with politics because the deck is stacked against them. Is that really true?

No. Let’s break it down:

1. Most people under 50 today get their news and ideas from the internet, which is a right-wing playground;
2. The right has its own, very popular TV network, and, in any event, most of the people who watch the news on broadcast TV are elderly Trump voters;
3. The left has the NYT, but only a small number of people read it. The right has the WSJ;
4. There are plenty of periodicals on both sides; and
5. Hollywood is more interested in making money than in scoring ideological points. Rupert Murdoch used to own one of the studios, but he sold it.

The bottom line is that the reactionary right is losing the culture war for two other reasons. First, the principal opinion-makers on the right are more interested in tax cuts than Dr. Seuss. Second, younger Americans are concerned about rising inequality, the dollar store economy, bigotry, and climate change. The right has nothing to offer on any of these points; it even denies that climate change exists. Why would anyone under 30 embrace the right under these circumstances?

As I’ve noted many times before, the reactionary right is attempting to use the political system to crush popular leftish ideas instead of putting its resources into winning the intellectual debate. Assuming, for purposes of argument, that the right has the political and legal muscle to impose some degree of censorship on the left, can this approach actually work in the long run?

History says no. It didn’t even work in totalitarian states prior to the advent of the internet. Given the practical difficulties involved in controlling the web, and the libertarian strains of reactionary thought, how can the right completely stifle the woke left, even under unrealistically favorable circumstances?

Republicans are determined to provide business with a docile, low-paid workforce, so they naturally hate unemployment insurance. They do their best to keep payments to their absolute minimum, and to make the system as hard to navigate as possible. DeSantis even admitted that Rick Scott had done that in the early stages of the pandemic.

But Republicans love the unvaccinated members of their base. What happens when these people start getting laid off for violating employer vaccine mandates? Will the GOP intervene to make sure they get paid in spite of their insubordination?

My guess is that the donor class will prevail over the base on this one, but it will be a dilemma, to be sure.

In a truly fascist regime, business remains in private hands, but is strictly regulated in the interests of the nation. Illiberal democracies are quite different. In an illiberal democracy, the government compels businessmen to stand in line, suck up, and compete for favors. It is a system that more closely resembles feudalism than democratic capitalism.

Putin practically invented this system. Orban does it, too. We had a glimpse of it in this country, with Trump’s whimsical tariffs and exceptions.

So how would businesses respond to the Orban Option in America? Opinion would be divided. Many small business owners are ideological Reactionaries and would have nothing to fear from arbitrary interventions, so they would probably welcome the new regime. History tells us in any event that small business owners are typically the backbone of reactionary governments, regardless of the time and place. Larger corporations would be much less enthusiastic—particularly tech businesses. Anyone with strong interests in international trade and a liberal workforce is going to run into trouble with a regime that celebrates and protects the past, not the present and the future.

About 40 percent of our GOP senators are poised to vote for a large new dose of public spending. Does that mean we can count on them to be responsible and support a debt ceiling increase? Is the next crisis over before it began?

To refuse to lift the debt ceiling is nihilism under the best of circumstances. In the current environment, it would be throwing gas on a fire. In addition, voting to hold the country hostage for spending cuts after supporting a massive new spending program would be an act of breathtaking hypocrisy.

Don’t bet it won’t happen.

If Viktor Orban had his way, he would probably build a wall around his entire country—not just to keep the dirty foreigners out, but to hold his young, talented people in. Unfortunately for him, he needs EU money to keep his country afloat and line his friends’ pockets, so the wall isn’t a real possibility. What can he do?

Well, he has plenty of appeal to the GOP, so why not persuade them to immigrate? Rod Dreher is already there. Why not Tucker, or even Trump?

It would work for everyone, including us.

For better or worse, watching the Olympics is an intense experience for me. I don’t watch the Closing Ceremonies, because they only remind me that there is a void in my life that needs to be filled.

Otherwise, here are my last thoughts on the games:

1. The US and China basically engage in different competitions. The Chinese are bit players in swimming, track, and team sports, while we don’t care about the sports they dominate. As a result, you almost never see close, dramatic confrontations between athletes of the two countries. Our real rivals are Australia and Jamaica.
2. The pandemic made a difference. China and island nations that mostly kept the virus out clearly had an advantage over us.
3. I did a thought experiment which led me to realize that I have more vivid memories of the 1972 than the 2016 Olympics. I think there is a message in there about youth and consciousness. What will we remember about Tokyo, besides the pandemic? Probably the Biles fiasco, the failures of our sprinters, KD bailing out our basketball team, and the successes of our swimmers. Time will tell.

You see it every day: prominent reactionary GOP politicians fighting for the right to spread the virus; parents demonstrating at school board meetings against mask mandates; faux libertarians screaming about personal freedom on TV. These same people, of course, lead the charge against freedom of choice on abortion. It’s enough to make you want to throw up.

But we are being told that most vaccine doubters are actually victims, and can be reached by a better vaccination program. In other words, it’s Biden’s fault. Do you buy that?

Consider the following common justifications for not getting the vaccine:

1. I’m uninsured, and I don’t believe the vaccine is free: Well, it is, and you have been told that by the government and the media from the beginning;
2. I can’t take time off work: Then make an appointment for after work. Pharmacies are open after 5:00;
3. I don’t have transportation: So how do you get to work and the grocery store?
4. It’s not proven to be safe: How many people have did from the vaccine, as opposed to the virus?

The bottom line is that there is no good reason to refuse the vaccine. It’s time for mandates—period.

OK, just one more.

The great would-be emperor Xi

Chose to take on the land of the free.

He spent gold to win gold.

Winning never gets old

But he lost in the end, to our glee.

So the Summer Olympics are done.

I can’t say it’s always been fun.

Our sprinters just flopped

So we’ll need a new crop

Right before the next games have begun.