Cromwell

Marx was an economic determinist. He argued that a nation’s political system and culture were driven by its economic system, which was defined by the type and ownership of the means of production. A capitalist society, characterized by large manufacturing companies with middle class owners, would thus have a political system run for the benefit of the middle class. And so on.

The irony of the Chinese system is that the political “superstructure” is thoroughly communist, but the economy is predominantly capitalist. A genuine Marxist would say that is impossible, but there it is, for all to see.

What does it show? That the CCP isn’t really Marxist, and that economic determinism is wrong.

The facts aren’t in dispute, the law is not particularly complicated, and the outcome is not in doubt. As a result, I’m only watching bits and pieces of it.

For me, the most interesting development of the first day was the fact that eleven GOP senators voted against procedural rules that were approved by both parties and by the Trump defense team. The motley crew of rules opponents included all of the men who are believed to be running for president except Tom Cotton. One has to assume they think they can sell voting against the rules to the base as a ringing protest against the trial itself. Why? If Trump had no problem with the rules, why would the base care?

Viewed from a distance, the history of the USSR looks like a series of pendulum swings from repression to liberalization and back again. Thus, War Communism led to the NEP, which led to Stalinism, which led to Khrushchev’s partial liberalization, which led to Brezhnev’s lukewarm Stalinism, which led to Gorbachev, who lost control of the situation during a liberalization campaign and presided over the implosion of the country. You can look it up.

That didn’t happen with China. Why not? First, the CCP had the advantage of learning from the Soviet experience, and was determined not to repeat it. Second, the CCP was much bolder and imaginative than the Soviet leadership. It essentially scrapped most of the economic elements of communism, while retaining the political elements of centralized control. It worked; the nation prospered, while the CCP maintained its monopoly on power.

Of course, orthodox Marxist thought holds that what the CCP accomplished was logically and historically impossible. More on that irony in my next China post.

Ben Sasse argues that unconditional fealty to Trump is not conservatism. He’s right, of course; the pathetic thing is that it took a lot of courage for him to say it. How in the world did we get to this state of affairs?

I’ve discussed the devolution of the GOP at great length in previous posts. I have a new series on the topic, focusing on the impacts of several key personalities, planned for next month. For present purposes, there are two important things to remember:

1. The GOP hasn’t been a genuinely conservative party since it embraced Newt Gingrich and his bomb throwing and decided tax cuts for the wealthy were the solution to all economic problems, regardless of the underlying circumstances. In other words, conservatism hasn’t been part of the GOP equation for over 25 years. The last real GOP conservative of any consequence was George H. W. Bush.
2. Trump’s great “accomplishment” has been to convince the vast majority of GOP voters that he was the only thing standing between them and the destruction of their idea of America. He did this with his tweets and rallies and in cooperation with the house organ of the Reactionary faction of the party: Fox News. That’s how the “weird worship” came about– the reason Mitt Romney, the standard bearer of the GOP in the 2012 presidential election, is a pariah within the party less than a decade later.

Think about that last sentence for a minute. It shows you exactly how far down the GOP has gone, and how fast.

It was the summer of 2023. The GOP race for the nomination had just begun. The field was crowded, as Trump had ultimately decided not to run. Virtually all of the candidates, of course, were doing everything they could to win over his supporters.

Militia activity had increased, and was becoming more brazen and organized. There were widespread concerns that the relationship between the militias and the GOP was starting to resemble that between the IRA and Sinn Fein, to say nothing of the Nazis and the SA. As a result, one of the first questions asked of the candidates at the initial debate was about militia activity.

Predictably, only Ben Sasse was willing to condemn the militias. Marco Rubio, always a weathervane in such matters, responded to the question by attacking what he called the “radical left” and praising the “patriots.” The militias got the hint, and stepped up the violence. The left began to arm in response. It was clear that 2020 had only been a dress rehearsal; 2024 was the year that America would truly choose to remain a liberal democracy, or not.

Imperial China thought it had two kinds of neighbors: barbarians and vassal states. The barbarians were people whose culture was only minimally impacted by China; they had to be overawed, paid off, or crushed. The vassal states were small neighboring states whose culture had been largely shaped by China. They were given substantial autonomy as long as they openly acknowledged their conceptual subservience to the Chinese government.

So what would happen if, say, China overcomes American resistance and gains effective control over the South China Sea navigation routes, thereby putting its foot on the throats of the Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese? They will have to decide to fight or submit. If they submit, the terms of their surrender will probably look a lot like the lord/vassal relationship of imperial times. They will be permitted to run their internal affairs without much interference as long as they don’t take any actions that negatively impact Chinese interests.

There should be two bills. The first should be, essentially, a disaster relief bill; it should pass quickly, and with bipartisan support. It should include the following: an extension of unemployment benefits and pandemic business relief until the early fall; adequate funds to open schools and expedite testing and vaccinations; and state and local government relief. It should not include checks to individuals.

The second bill would be a purely partisan initiative, and would pass through reconciliation. This one would include permanent expansions of the welfare state, some sort of increase in the minimum wage, and funds for green infrastructure. Most of this would be paid for by tax increases on corporations and the wealthy. It would take longer, but that’s OK; it isn’t a response to an immediate emergency.

Unfortunately, the scheme I have just described is not happening. There are basically two reasons for it. First, the GOP incorrectly continues to view state and local aid as some sort of inappropriate bailout fund for blue states. Second, the Democrats have fallen in love with the $1,400 checks, which they apparently view as a big vote winner after Georgia. If they were an incentive to the GOP to vote for the disaster relief bill, I could swallow them, but they have become something completely different, and less savory.

We are going to end up with a mishmash. It’s not going to help with the second bill, and the impacts of the individual checks are ultimately going to be negative, both politically and economically.

Most people associate Reagan with “Morning in America,” but that was just the second act. The first was a deep recession caused by the Fed in order to crush the prevailing inflation expectations. It was a grim time, most vividly depicted in a series of movies about salt of the earth Americans losing their family farms. The Democrats consequently won the 1982 elections by a large margin.

My fear for the Biden recovery plan, and the political landscape that follows, looks something like that.

Imagine that you are Xi Jinping. What is your dream for China in, say, 2030?

Here’s a reasonable guess:

1. China is prosperous, and more self-sufficient than it is today. Its supply lines for vital resources are completely secure.
2. The military is, at the very least, a match for the Americans.
3. China has gained complete control over the area in which it claims sovereignty. This includes areas of the South China Sea and possibly even Taiwan.
4. The Communist Party’s authority within China is unchallenged. There is no meaningful dissent anywhere in the country. Minorities have been totally assimilated.
5. The area immediately outside of Chinese sovereign territory consists of vassal states. This includes, at a minimum, Japan, Vietnam, and both parts of Korea.
6. The rest of the world has learned the hard way not to say anything negative about Chinese political and economic practices.

What is missing here is at least as important as what is included. China does not aspire to dominate the world with its military, or to turn the US and Europe into mirror image authoritarian states. Its ideology is Chinese exceptionalism, not communism. You can stop worrying about being sent to labor on a collective farm. The imposition of sanctions for criticism of China, however, is another story.

What would it mean to be a Chinese vassal state? I will address this in a post tomorrow.

So what can Biden do to address the concerns of the white Christians that the left plans to send them to concentration camps for re-education? Here are some suggestions:

1. ENGAGE DIRECTLY ON THE SUBJECT: In the past, the left has refused to take the right’s cultural concerns seriously. That’s a mistake. The issue should be addressed clearly and specifically; otherwise, the right will continue to assume the worst, and the wounds will fester.
2. DON’T POKE THE BEAR: Gratuitous attempts to score culture war points for the blue team don’t go over well in red America. Do your best to avoid them; that’s what “unity” is all about.
3. DON’T SET UP CONCENTRATION CAMPS: Well, duh.

The irony here is that the GOP did unexpectedly well with Hispanics in the election–even with some Mexican-Americans around the Texas border. That gives Republicans some incentive to downplay the racism in the future, which would help a bit. The more the GOP enjoys a vested interest in the system as it is supposed to exist, the less likely we will see a reprise of January 6.

Shortly before Trump took office in January, 2017, I predicted that he would jam a regressive tax cut through Congress, that the deficit would explode as a result, that the Fed would raise interest rates to respond to an overheated economy, and that we would fall into a recession. I was right on the first two points. But on the third, the Fed pulled back after the “taper tantrum,” without any apparently negative results. With no interest rate increase, we had the Trump pre-pandemic economy, with real wages increasing substantially, even for people with minimal skills. The electorate’s memory of that Brigadoon is the reason the election was as close as it was, even with Trump’s uncaring and inept response to the pandemic.

Trump sold his tax cut as a supply side measure that would vastly increase investment. On that point, it was (predictably) a miserable failure. Instead, the unintended consequence was something like Abenomics in America. What does Japan’s experience tell us about what we can expect if Biden continues on his present course?

There are actually four questions here:

1. Are America and Japan essentially similar?
2. Did Abenomics work?
3. What are the actual risks involved in supercharging the economy with spending increases and tax cuts?
4. Are they worth it?

The answer to #1 is mixed; like Japan, America is aging and becoming somewhat stagnant, but to a lesser degree, due to higher levels of immigration and a less regulated economy. Japan’s debt, as a percentage of GDP, is much higher, but so is its domestic savings rate. On #2, we also have a mixed bag; the government didn’t succeed in raising the country from its comfortable torpor, but it at least managed to keep things from getting worse.

Paul Krugman and the administration argue that the benefits of a huge stimulus, as opposed to targeted relief, outweigh the risks; based on the Trump era experience and that of Japan, the likelihood of inflation and an increase in interest rates is low, and if it should happen, the Fed can just take care of it by slamming on the brakes. It is possible, of course, that inflation expectations are so low today that inflation and interest rates will not increase much, in which case they will be proved right. But the raw materials for inflation–supply chain bottlenecks, huge piles of savings, a trade war with China, and enormous suppressed demand for entertainment and services–also exist, and a Democratic administration is going to be cut less slack by investors and the Fed than Trump was.

If inflation increases and interest rates follow, both the stock market and the bond market will be crushed; as I noted in a previous post, America is now hooked on low interest rates. We will have another “taper tantrum,” except on a much larger scale, and with no subsequent relief from the Fed and the markets. What happens then? The wealthy and the modestly affluent respond to their loss of wealth by cutting back their spending, and recession follows. Politically, this is a disaster. It’s what I predicted for Trump, only a few years later, with the GOP responding with demands for huge cuts in spending on the safety net.

So, are the benefits worth the risks? It’s a much closer call than Krugman would suggest. I would say no. We’re probably about to find out.

You might well wonder how, in the eyes of the right, does the land of the free devolve into the home of the Christian concentration camps? It’s the numbers, baby!

America is likely to become a minority majority country in the next few decades. The right is painfully aware of this. Add to it, in their view, the fact that the younger generations are being brainwashed by the liberal MSM, the universities, and Hollywood, and you have a huge problem. The cherry on top is immigration. Of course the Democrats want to create millions of new citizens out of illegal immigrants and refugees. They’ll all be Democrats! Then what do you think happens? How can real America survive a tsunami of people who can’t be assimilated, and who reject our culture? And how can the GOP possibly compete with that?

With an increasingly intolerant generation in charge, the numbers on their side, and the liberal intelligentsia rooting them on, anything is possible. Even with the advantages of federalism and the Electoral College, real America is doomed. At that point, the best they can hope for is to be treated as second-class citizens; more likely, the concentration camps loom. Better to take action now and change the system by stealth or violence than to face re-education or even extermination later. The left’s cultural power can only be checked by a monopoly of political power.

What can reasonable people do to combat these facially ridiculous fears? I will address that in my last post on the subject.

It is generally accepted by the center-left that the 2009 stimulus package was too small for the occasion. There were two good reasons for that: political resistance to a larger package; and the lack of accurate information about the magnitude of the recession in real time.

Most of the Obama veterans don’t want to make the same mistake twice; they are holding out for an extremely large bill that far exceeds the output gap this time around. The circumstances are different, however. Regardless of the current slowdown in job creation, most of the economy is operating more or less at full speed; in addition, asset prices and savings have gone up substantially over the past year, providing a pool of money for a large economic expansion after the pandemic has been overcome. The problems are limited to a few specific industries and to state and local governments. They need relief immediately, but on a temporary basis; the rest of us are doing fine, and do not require any assistance.

We seem to be headed towards a form of Abenomics with American characteristics, inspired by the performance of the Trump economy prior to the pandemic. Paul Krugman insists the benefits of this exceed the risks. Is he right? I will comment on that tomorrow.

I am happy to report that 144 eminent constitutional lawyers agree with me; the First Amendment standards established by case law for criminal cases do not apply to impeachment proceedings. Not that it will matter to the 45 GOP senators who are determined to acquit.

Donald Trump is thrown off Twitter. Josh Hawley loses a book deal. Bakers are required to provide services for gay couples. Celebrities are attacked for statements that are not politically correct on social media. Confederate statues are toppled. The 1619 Project says America is an evil empire. Lincoln’s name is removed from a school in San Francisco.

What do all of these events have in common? To the GOP, they are manifestations of “cancel culture,” of course. A large portion of the right sees them as the beginning of the end of America as they know it. What starts with a city removing Lincoln’s name from a school ends in concentration camps for Christians. That’s the reason, other than their glorious legacy, that Christian nationalists are entitled to bend or even shatter the rules of our political system in order to maintain a monopoly of power. If you were facing extermination, wouldn’t you put on a fur robe and a Viking hat and go storm the Capitol, too?

Of course, you have probably noted that the actions described in the first paragraph of this post are not attributable to the federal government, and that neither Joe Biden nor anyone in the Democratic Party has ever supported concentration camps for Christians. Biden, unlike Trump, is actually a practicing Christian himself. What people like Tucker Carlson are suggesting is way, way beyond anything proposed by anyone on the left–even the Twitter activists, who matter far less than they think.

So how does America’s end actually happen, in the eyes of furry Vikings? More on that in my next post.