The jury did the right thing, and so disaster was averted. Some commentators are calling this an inflection point, but they’re wrong; the facts were so extreme that they are unlikely to be repeated. Don’t be surprised if the next case goes the other way.
What will Tucker say? Either that Chauvin was railroaded by a woke leftist mob or that the verdict proves America isn’t racist. My bet is on the second, but we’ll see tonight.
A man in a cart in the place where I live
Fishes for balls in a golf course pond.
His prizes are worthless.
His searches are fruitless.
So why does he do it?
What else would he do?
It may sound absurd
But it gives his life meaning.
It gives his life meaning.
Under normal conditions, I’m not a fan of using the criminal law to punish police officers who make fatal mistakes. The job is just too difficult, and there are other, more appropriate remedies available to protect the public. In George Floyd’s case, however, even the right was shocked by the callousness of the violence. The killing was murder, and should be punished as such.
I wish Chauvin had taken the stand, so the prosecutor could have asked him at what point he planned to take his knee off the guy’s neck. If the answer, as I suspect, was when Floyd was totally immobilized, how would he be able to tell the difference between that and death? Inquiring minds want to know!
If Chauvin is somehow acquitted, the black community is going to take it as a signal that police officers can get away with murder as long as the victim is a minority, and will respond accordingly. That conclusion won’t be exactly accurate; the guy has been fired, and the government has paid a huge settlement to Floyd’s estate, so a deterrence factor is still in place. It is true enough, however, for the concern to be perfectly legitimate.
As far as I know, Chauvin has never expressed the slightest regret for what he did. He needs to go down. Today.
Defeat in the 2020 elections has only increased the sense of victimhood on the part of the reactionary GOP base. Instead of engaging in a battle over policy, the intelligentsia of the Republican Party (if you can call them that) is now openly embracing anti-democratic ideas and branding a majority of American–not outsiders or even the government– as the enemy. The leadership, for its part, is pursuing a “no enemies to the right” approach by tolerating extremists, if not openly embracing their views. The GOP is, in effect, declaring war on America instead of trying to change its mind.
Since, for a variety of reasons, secession is not a practical option, this means pursuing vote suppression legislation at the state level, infiltrating the military and law enforcement agencies, and packing the judiciary wherever possible with reliable supporters. If this can be accomplished, and the GOP wins the presidency in 2024, a suitable pretext can be found for imposing emergency restrictions on the cultural left. The Orban Option will then be an accomplished fact.
How can Biden and the Democrats resist this? Here are some suggestions:
The Claremont Institute published a column in which the author argued that the 81 million Biden voters aren’t real Americans, that all of our institutions are rotten, and that the Constitution doesn’t work any more. At about the same time, Tucker Carlson was giving his voice of approval on TV to neo-Nazi replacement theory. What is going on here?
Instead of repudiating Trump after his resounding defeat and half-hearted coup attempt, GOP thought leaders are responding by moving even further right on culture war issues. They are openly embracing the concept of an anti-democratic counterrevolution based on white Christian nationalism without identifying a means of accomplishing it, and describing more than half of America as the enemy. This is, as you can imagine, a very dangerous state of affairs if you believe in liberal democracy.
Where does this go from here? Anything that gets repeated a few times on Fox News, regardless of whether it conforms with actual life experience of right-wing voters, becomes the gospel in Nebraska shortly thereafter. We can only hope against hope that the Biden boom causes middle America to tune it out. If that doesn’t work, then the only thing protecting our system would be a lack of will or imagination on the part of the counterrevolutionary wannabes.
Just as there are two paths (mass mobilization vs. control of the armed forces) to fascism, so there are two kinds of fascist leaders. The first is highly ideological; the leader in question has a deep reverence for traditional culture and firm, unwavering ideas about how to return the nation from its current corrupt state to its previous moment of glory. The second, by contrast, completely rejects ideology and the entire idea of objective truth in favor of faith in an omnipotent leader, who is consequently free to change his tactics on a dime as circumstances require. Franco is the best example of the first kind of fascist; Kim and Putin are excellent examples of the second.
If you’re wondering, Hitler and Mussolini lean more towards the second group, given the fluid nature of their ideological views and tactical flexibility, but obviously have some of the characteristics of the first group, as well. Donald Trump would have been the ideal type for the second group if he had not been too lazy and narcissistic to be a committed fascist.
On its face, the differences between the two types are so stark as to be unreconcilable. One believes in an anachronistic truth; the other denies truth and embraces power. Which is more likely to prevail in America? Based on our experience with Trump, you would have to say the second type, but it is hard to see any future Trumps among the list of potential GOP contenders in 2024.
President Biden is said to be haunted by the images of the American withdrawal from Vietnam. And with good reason! No one seriously believes the Afghan government will survive long after our troops leave, and what happens next won’t be pretty. Anyone who advocated withdrawal had better be prepared for that.
It won’t be an exact rerun of Saigon, however. There were no warlords in South Vietnam in 1975, so the government survived until it was defeated on the battlefield. The Afghan government, on the other hand, has minimal support and is likely to start imploding very shortly. Power will return to the warlords; some of them will fight the Taliban, while others will look to make deals. There won’t be much left by the time we withdraw. There won’t be peace, either.
On the left-leaning justice named Breyer.
In the legal world, you can’t go higher.
I hate to be curt
But he’s older than dirt
So it’s time for the guy to retire.
Imagine that you are Xi Jinping, and you are considering your options with regard to Taiwan. The effective independence of the island feels like a stick in the eye to you–or, perhaps, an amputated limb. You know that your legacy in Chinese history will be assured if you can somehow bring Taiwan back under your control. What’s more, you think you have both the will and the ability to do it.
But still. China has prospered for all of these years without driving America into war. You think America will back down, but you can’t be sure. America’s military is experienced, and not to be trifled with. And everything is going well in your world without taking any such enormous risks. Is now really the time to strike?
Probably not. Maybe if it looks like America’s relations with the Quad start looking more dangerous, and you need to launch a preemptive attack somewhere. But for now, you think you’re winning, so the rewards don’t justify the risks. The day is coming, but it isn’t here quite yet.
A note to my readers: I will be on vacation next week. Any posting will be irregular at best.
American ambiguity towards the protection of Taiwan was, in its initial phases, just a diplomatic formula. There was never any doubt about our willingness or ability to fend off a Chinese attack at the time. Our military predominance was obvious to both sides.
That is no longer true, at least for what the Chinese would view as a home game. There is some talk of creating a red line in order to avoid stumbling into war over the issue. That sounds like Obama’s line in the sand on Syria to me. It’s a bad idea.
The Chinese are going to make their decisions based on what they see, not what we say. Making an unequivocal commitment to Taiwan would sound more like weakness than strength to them. If Biden is wise, he will maintain the status quo, and back it up with actions rather than words.
Historically, the GOP had been the tougher of the two parties on Russia; it was Romney, not Obama, who identified Russia as a serious threat during the 2012 debates. Trump changed all of that, with his inexplicable enthusiasm for Putin, and his party followed. The Republicans blew off the threat to Ukraine during the impeachment proceedings for purely partisan reasons. But what about now, since Trump is no longer president? What will the GOP leadership do if Putin turns the screws on Ukraine during Biden’s term?
My guess is that the party will split, but most of the sentiment will be in favor of a harder line on the Russian government. There will be some post-Trump empathy for Russia, but not much. Trump will not be able to carry his party on this point. The Cold War will prevail over the culture war.
Let’s be honest: the electorate punished Trump for what he didn’t do (control the virus), not for what he did (consistently violate constitutional norms). GOP voters completely shrugged off the man on golf cart’s outrages. His reactionary base even appeared to approve of them, as they were proof of his disdain for the “deep state.”
What does this mean? It means the next GOP presidential candidate, whether it be Trump or someone else, is likely to promise more of the same. As a result, there is no point in Biden showing restraint when it comes to the scope of executive action. He won’t get any credit for it from the right.
I’m not advocating for actions that are clearly illegal. Neither am I suggesting that Biden should do anything gratuitous to throw gas on the culture war fire. What I am saying here is that Biden should take the most reasonably expansive view of the scope of his powers in instances where he can make a significant difference in the lives of the American people, because, in the real world, there is no down side to doing so.
It was impossible to watch the PBS series on Hemingway without thinking about Donald Trump. The toxic masculinity, womanizing, mythologizing, and tough guy image–they were all too familiar. If you could wriggle inside Trump’s tiny brain, you would probably find that he sees himself as a Hemingway successor, because, well, why wouldn’t he?
The differences, of course, are more compelling. Hemingway actually lived most of the experiences he wrote about, and left an enduring literary legacy. Trump just makes stuff up and screws people over. His legacy is the January 6 riot that he provoked and then watched on TV.
On those extraordinary occasions when money is plentiful and free, policymakers don’t have to worry about tradeoffs. That time is running out, and in any event, tax increases have down sides. Does the proposed corporate tax increase, on balance, make sense?
The advantages to the Biden proposal are as follows:
The down sides, in a nutshell, are that it will make American businesses less profitable and competitive on the world stage, and that plenty of blue voters will be hit by the lost value in their retirement plans. As to the first objection, however, American corporate taxes will still make up a lower percentage of GDP than similar taxes in Europe, so the competitiveness argument isn’t that compelling even if, as seems likely, it proves impossible to negotiate an international agreement prohibiting a race to the bottom on tax rates.
To me, the pluses outweigh the minuses. We may wind up with a situation in which the corporate tax increase is reduced, and other revenue sources are found to make up the difference. If that happens, I will evaluate it at that time.
On a micro level, each business is best served by keeping its costs low, which is consistent with the tax cuts and deregulation promised by the GOP. On a macro level, however, if businesses are successful in holding down wages, American workers won’t have enough money to buy anything, and sales fall. You wind up with a dysfunctional economy built on soaring asset prices and dollar stores. That is a classic tragedy of the commons.
Whether the GOP likes it or not, only government action can resolve a tragedy of the commons. That is precisely what Biden is trying to do. Most businesses, however, are still stuck in tax cut and deregulation mode. They are opposing the infrastructure bill, because they hate the tax increases.
Do they have a point? I will discuss that in a future post.