Cromwell

Trump and Modi are both swaggering right-wing populists with limited tolerance for opposition. They should have no trouble getting along, right?

The problem is that Modi wants to be the unquestioned boss of India, but Trump sees himself as the boss of the entire world. The two aspirations are incompatible. Friction was the inevitable result.

Two observations are pertinent here. First, as I’ve noted many times before, the notion of an enduring international coalition of nationalists is logically ridiculous, because no nationalist leader is going to agree to subordinate his country’s interests to someone else. Second, history provides evidence for the point; the high-water mark for extreme nationalism was the 1930s, and you know how that turned out.

Like everything else, Trump wants to dictate what is admirable and what isn’t in American culture. To that end, he has taken over the Kennedy Center and changed its programming. He is also conducting a review of the Smithsonian’s exhibits and commenting frequently and stridently about sports.

But his power in this field is limited. If you don’t take federal money, he has no control over you. He can’t make you watch professional wrestling at the White House no matter how hard he tries, and he can’t force MLB to put Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame.

Trump is a completely orthodox Republican on the issue of organized labor; he believes it shouldn’t exist. In spite of that, he enjoys the support of a surprisingly large percentage of American workers. How is that possible?

Because he has succeeded in persuading them that their primary adversaries are not their employers; instead, foreigners, illegal immigrants, and a hapless federal government are to blame for their stagnant wages.

How long will this last? Until the tariff and deportation scheme is proven in the public’s eyes to be a failure.

Here’s how the factions would react to MAHA:

CDs: This is ridiculous and dangerous. The issues Kennedy is raising were resolved decades ago. He has to go.

PBPs: Ditto, and his comments about pesticides and processed foods are damaging business, as well.

CLs: Anyone who reduces the size and power of the nanny state is welcome, even if some of his ideas are a bit strange.

Reactionaries: Doctors proved during the pandemic that they don’t know squat, but they want to rule the world. It’s time to take power and freedom back from elites like them. If a few people die unnecessarily in the fight for freedom, that’s a price well worth paying.

Kennedy’s ability to stay in Trump’s good graces depends on his willingness to ease up on businesses and thus keep the PBPs happy. Thus far, he has done that; the focus of his tenure has been on firing people and supporting anti-vaxxers, which keeps the far right happy.

Bill Cassidy is a doctor. He has strong feelings about vaccines and public health. So when he was called upon to cast the deciding vote for RFK, he only capitulated on the basis of promises that RFK would keep him in the loop about vaccines and not do anything crazy.

How has that turned out? Naturally, RFK is doing everything he can to stack the deck against vaccines, including those that have been effective for decades. And what is Cassidy doing about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He’s too afraid of the base to take action.

The Conservatives were a lock to win the Canadian election before Trump started calling Canada our 51st state. The Liberals owe their victory to him.

Now Trump is using tariffs in an attempt to interfere with the Brazilian legal system and the future election. To no one’s surprise, Lula’s ratings have gone way up, and the Brazilian government has refused Trump’s demands to back off Bolsonaro, whose chances of winning the presidency are now slim and none.

When will Trump figure out that most of the world doesn’t want him to be its boss? Probably never.

Apparently too concerned with oppressing everyone else to worry specifically about women, Trump has been conspicuously silent on abortion to date. Not so the great state of Texas, which is so firmly convinced of its awesomeness that it wants to rule the entire country. Texas is on the brink of passing another bounty hunter statute directed at the interstate sale and transportation of abortion pills. What happens after that?

Litigation, of course, followed by blue state refusals to recognize the judgments. In the end, the Supreme Court will decide if Texas has the power to regulate the mail and people and companies residing outside its boundaries. That decision will have a major impact on American federalism for years to come.

The new Texas law will be another piece of legislation reminiscent of the Fugitive Slave Act, except that the Act was at least a federal statute. Imagine if, say, Alabama had imposed its will on the North on the slavery issue; that is what is going on here.

AI enthusiasts insist that artificial intelligence will vastly increase productivity without reducing the net number of jobs, although many jobs will change in some respects. They have history on their side. On the other hand, AI pessimists point out that past technological revolutions have never made the human brain redundant. That’s true, too.

As I noted in a previous post, Marx wrongly thought the factory was the end of history. It is tempting to look at the current knowledge-based economy and imagine it is set in stone, too. With AI, it isn’t; entry-level office jobs are disappearing before our eyes. Then what?

I can only see two scenarios here. The optimistic one is that the welfare state is massively embellished through the use of UBI, and that millions of Americans will be freed to follow more creative pastimes. The other is that the redundant workers, lacking any other way to make a living, become retainers for a handful of incredibly wealthy people; in other words, we have a neo-feudal economy, with the owners of robots and AI models becoming the equivalents of medieval nobles, and everyone else providing services for them.

If it turns out to be the latter, I’m glad I won’t be around to see it.

All of the data suggests that support for the Democratic Party as a whole is faltering. Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown, on the other hand, raised record amounts of money in the first days of their candidacies. What should we make of this?

The most important job of the Democratic Party, in the eyes of its voters, was to keep Trump out of office. It failed miserably and is paying the price for it. That in no way means there is less support for the resistance, or that centrists are moving closer to Trump; it just means blue voters want to put their money where it can actually do some good, as in flipping the Senate seats in Ohio and North Carolina.

Trump’s decision to send troops to LA and D.C., while completely unjustified, has resulted in theater, not practical consequences. Peaceful protesters have not been shot; local officials have not been removed from office; and the troops have only acted in a very limited capacity. Does that mean we shouldn’t be worried?

No, because the precedent has been established, the judiciary has done nothing to stop it, and the practice is becoming normalized. There is every reason to believe that Trump will expand it to other large blue state cities with even less legal justification. All it will take is one spark–one violent act of resistance to the occupation–and things will get really ugly, really fast.

I don’t know if it is a failure of imagination or something Roy Cohn taught him, but Trump loves to accuse his adversaries of things he actually did. Remember when he said, “You’re the puppet!” to Hillary Clinton?

Last week, the FBI carried out a search for classified documents in John Bolton’s house and office. Yesterday, Trump announced he was firing a Fed board member because she allegedly made false statements on financial documents years ago.

At least you can’t accuse him of lacking a dark sense of humor.

It’s 1828. The presidential election is imminent. Andrew Jackson, still seething with anger after the House ignored his electoral vote plurality and made Adams president in 1824, is the favorite. But Jackson has a problem; protectionism is popular in the mid-Atlantic states, but his base in the South hates tariffs, and he needs both to win. How can he square the circle?

Enter Martin Van Buren, known as “The Little Magician.” Van Buren hijacks the tariff bill and adds concessions to groups that Jackson needs in November. The final version of the bill makes no economic sense and is ultimately known as the “Tariff of Abominations,” but it is a winner for Jackson, as his base blames Adams, and the tariff beneficiaries give him the credit for the concessions. Jackson prevails in the subsequent election.

In 2024, an angry candidate who lost what he considered a rigged election in 2020 won in part by making economically nonsensical promises on tips, overtime, and Social Security. His promises were put into law in the BBB. Does that ring any bells?

Today’s NYT has two companion articles about the impacts of foreign trade. The first focuses on the problems created by a skimpy safety net when jobs are destroyed by foreign competition; the second discusses the failure of Congress to adequately fund transition programs for unemployed workers after China joined the WTO.

I’ve made the point before, but it is worthy of repetition; while both parties are frequently tied to “neoliberalism” by populists, their concepts of “neoliberalism” were actually quite different. The Democrats wanted the victims of globalization to be compensated by the winners, but the Republicans didn’t, and the votes for a more robust safety net were never there. The blue team subsequently received the same amount of blame for its failure to deliver as the red team did for its successful attempts at obstruction.

I provided a description of God in my last Metaphysical Monday post. Do the three major Western religions meet the test?

I have always described Judaism as a relatively logical religion that springs from a supremely illogical premise–that the Jews are God’s chosen people. Judaism thus fails the universality principle. It also fails the unchanging principle because its version of God, like the pagan gods, is perpetually intervening in the affairs of mankind.

Christianity is even worse. Because it grafts the Old Testament on to its central message in an effort to establish its historical bona fides, it fails the universality and unchanging principles. In addition, it flunks the immortality test as a result of the death of the son of God. Islam at least passes that test, but it too is tied to a particular time, place, and people; like the other two, for example, it attaches no importance to the great civilizations outside of the Middle East, so its God is neither universal nor unchanging.

What about the religions of Asia? I will discuss them in my next Metaphysical Monday post.

Trump and the Euros have finally come up with the outlines of a peace proposal that is reasonably based on facts on the ground. As of today, Putin is showing no interest in it. Why?

Because Putin wants Ukraine and the end of NATO, not peace. While the war has had some serious geopolitical down sides for him–NATO has expanded closer to his borders, he has lost influence in Central Asia, and he is more dependent on China than ever–the domestic impacts have been manageable. He thinks Trump will ultimately walk away from the war and leave Ukraine to his mercy if he is just patient enough. He may well be right.

The only way to force Putin to make peace is to persuade him that America will continue to support Ukraine, come what may. Does Trump understand that? Clearly not.