Cromwell

One of the Tennessee GOP Senate hopefuls is a reactionary doctor (this is a trend–more on that later) named Manny Sethi. Ted Cruz is actively campaigning for Sethi, whose commercials feature the allegation that his opponent gave lots of money to Mitt Romney. That should tell you everything you need to know about his politics.

The latest Sethi ad includes the usual footage of cities being burned and statues being toppled. Sethi’s comment on this is that these people hate America. He, on the other hand, loves America. That, apparently, is reason enough to vote for him.

What Sethi is actually saying in these ads is that conservative, gun-loving, white Christians with at least one foot in the Confederacy are America, and the rest of us are just interlopers. If that is your idea of what America is, it is no surprise that the hundreds of millions of people who are being excluded aren’t fans.

There will be no peace in this country until people like Sethi are convinced, one way or another, that the rest of us are real Americans, too.

The two best words to describe the outlook of big American tech companies are “libertarian” and “globalist.” In the context of American politics, these terms cut completely different ways. The tech companies, like most other businesses, approve of Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation; they also appreciate Trump’s willingness to treat them as national champions in their dealings with the EU. On the other hand, they despise Trump’s tariffs, culture wars, and immigration restrictions; they are also concerned about chaotic government and the practical impacts of rapidly declining relations with China. Which way will the mop flop in November?

Mark Zuckerberg has tried very hard to maintain a connection to Trump without offending his left-leaning employees, with mixed success at best. A few tech titans are uncompromising libertarians who will support Trump, in spite of his obvious incompetence. Most of the others, however, will give their donations to the moderate left; they will see slightly higher taxes and some additional danger of antitrust actions as an acceptable price to pay for reasonable social policies and an end to the chaos.

When it is all said and done, they will probably be rewarded.

The election is 100 days away. The original Hundred Days resulted in Waterloo and Napoleon’s abdication. You can be sure that Trump intends to do everything in his power to make certain he doesn’t suffer a similar fate. What can we expect between now and then?

Lots of banging on the culture wars drum, of course. That won’t be enough to change the trajectory of the race, based on the results to date. We know that he has no respect for liberal democratic norms and a desperate desire to avoid looking like a loser. What else can he try?

Two things come to mind. The first, of course, would be a war with Iran. For whatever reason, that doesn’t seem to appeal to him. The other possibility would be vote suppression on a scale we have never seen before. The pandemic will provide some excuse for that, but something more would have to be attempted.

My greatest fear is that we will see armed right-wing militias appearing at polling stations and intimidating likely Democratic voters, in some cases with the support of local authorities. I really, really hope, for the sake of our country, that it doesn’t happen, but it is where we are heading.

Just as John Lewis can be viewed as a sort of left-wing version of John McCain, McCain’s funeral should be treated as a template for Lewis’. Obama should speak, the virtues of liberal democracy should be extolled, and there should be plenty of references to America and the arc of history. It should look like a pep rally for the blue team. Above all, the speakers should connect the dots between the struggles of the sixties and today. The opponents of the civil rights movement in the sixties are the same kind of people who are running commercials attacking rioters and celebrating “law and order.” That needs to be put in its proper historical perspective.

The commercials for GOP House and Senate candidates in Tennessee are angry, edgy, and all alike. They proclaim their love for guns, the police, and traditional values. They promise unconditional support for Trump and his efforts to drain the swamp and bring law and order to the country. They worry about how Christianity is being criminalized. They emphasize their lack of experience and ties to the establishment. Finally, and above all, they hate rioters, looters, and arrogant liberals (particularly Pelosi and AOC) who want to take their guns and call them racist.

What is noteworthy here is that there is no mention–none–of the pandemic, the recession, or rising inequality. Class is simply not an issue for these people, or their voters. It is 100 percent about the culture war. It’s not the economy, stupid.

Bernie Sanders’ supporters should be required to spend a day watching these commercials. To the left, it is so self-evident that they are correct on culture war issues, they refuse to acknowledge that another side has any right to exist. They will never get anywhere until they do.

The Republican leadership thinks the recession can be ended by rousting lazy employees from the hammock of dependency and forcing them back to work. That’s stupid. The recession is being driven by a lack of demand, not supply, and the supposedly lazy workers don’t have jobs waiting for them.

That said, there is something basically obnoxious about paying people more to stay home than to work. It sounds like something from a Marx Brothers movie. To that end, I would suggest the following changes to the system:

1. CUT OFF FEDERAL FUNDS IN STATES WHERE THE MARKET IS WORKING PROPERLY: Not every state has huge virus problems or high unemployment. Based on historical averages, I think 6 or 7 percent should be the threshold, but that is open to debate.
2. REDUCE THE PAYMENTS SOMEWHAT: Logically, the payments should be tied to previous wage levels, but most state unemployment compensation systems aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with that amount of data with the speed required under the circumstances. That means using an axe when a rapier would be more appropriate. $400 a week in federal benefits should give the vast majority of the unemployed enough to live on, when combined with state benefits.

Trump has no musical talent.

Did you wonder why the Republicans are having trouble agreeing on a stimulus package? Here’s why we’re about to go off the cliff:

1. CLs: The horror! The horror! The deficit is exploding! Cut spending immediately!
2. CDs: Do whatever you have to do to avoid widespread misery.
3. PBPs: Keep those business subsidies coming! But we also want liability protection, and the extra unemployment benefits have to go. They are effectively a minimum wage of $15 per hour. We can’t have that.
4. Reactionaries: Spend whatever is necessary to keep Trump in office, so he can keep fighting the culture wars.

The upshot of this is that the Reactionaries will flip and become adamantly opposed to deficits if Biden wins the election. They only support spending that primarily benefits white Christians in one way or another.

I usually find Thomas Friedman to be a bit of a pompous bore, but he hit the bullseye today with his column about America and Syria. Trump’s arsonist as fireman routine is, in fact, the precise approach taken by Assad to what was initially moderate and reasonable opposition. We know how that has turned out.

To extend the analogy a bit, Trump clearly doesn’t mind burning down the country any more than Assad did, and both rely on Putin to save their bacon. As to Assad’s Iranian friends, however, they will only come to Trump’s rescue by engineering some sort of stupid provocation. That is unlikely, but not impossible.

At first glance, the white Navy pilot and the black civil rights leader had little in common. But on what really mattered, they were the same. Both were plainspoken men with minimal tolerance for fools who loved their country and suffered greatly for it. Both of them believed passionately in liberal democratic values and the possibility of progress. And so, John Lewis, like John McCain, was an American hero; the mural in Atlanta got it right.

Lewis performed one final service for his country by dying when he did. He reminded us that the struggles of the present have their roots in what is now a less controversial past. The other side used “law and order” as a rallying cry back then, too. It should be dismissed now as it was then.

I didn’t agree with John McCain very often, but his patriotism and commitment to liberal democratic principles were beyond question. He understood that white supremacists were traitors, not patriots. He saw Trump as a potential authoritarian, and couldn’t stand him. He would have spoken out against Trump’s increasingly desperate efforts to win re-election by dividing the country and trashing the Constitution in the name of “law and order.” I’m sure of it.

How many prominent members of the current GOP are willing to stand up and oppose Trump for his destruction of democratic norms? Mitch McConnell? Lindsey Graham, supposedly an acolyte of McCain’s? Marco Rubio? Please. Give them tax cuts, conservative judges, and a ticket to re-election, and they will do anything the man on golf cart asks.

Mitt Romney. That’s it. If things get worse, and they probably will, he’s the only one who will be on our side.

Federal agents in unmarked cars kidnapping protesters with no connection to violence against federal property and detaining them without charge. It’s the American equivalent of Putin’s “little green men” in Ukraine. Or, to put it another way, it looks like the domestic version of the wag-the-dog war I’ve long feared with Iran. Either way, it is a dangerous escalation of Trump’s arsonist-as-fireman campaign.

This could just be a typical attempt to change the subject that blows over in time. Alternatively, it could be the start of an attempt at a genuine constitutional coup. Most likely, Trump hasn’t thought that far ahead, and will be driven by events and the advice of people like Barr and Steve Miller. We’ll know soon enough.

One thing is for certain: he’s determined to prove correct my statement that he would gladly leave half of America in ashes to retain control over the other half.

Homeland Security doesn’t have enough agents available to implement a coup. Keep your eye on the military. That’s where the danger really lies.

Chances are that you don’t think providing liability protection to employers relative to the virus is a high priority item at this stage of the pandemic, but it is for Mitch McConnell. A payroll tax cut, on the other hand, is at the top of Trump’s list. What does that tell us about the GOP?

In McConnell’s case, he always carries water for the donor class, because he thinks raising money and winning elections are the same thing. If you want to convert the GOP to “national conservatism,” you’re going to do it over his dead body. In Trump’s case, like most Republicans, he thinks tax cuts and deregulation are the solutions to every economic problem; he doesn’t have the mental agility to come up with anything else when conditions change. The payroll tax cut idea was positively demented when the country was locked down; today, it is merely stupid, because it would do nothing to address the lack of consumer confidence arising from the pandemic.

What does this mean for the next few days, and the economic cliff to come? Chaos, of course. That’s the GOP’s stock in trade.

Life in the time of Trump.

Convention’s getting near.

We’ve all seen this act before.

It’s full of hate and fear.

He moved the thing to Jacksonville

Which proves he has no brains.

Summertime in Florida?

I just hope it rains.

Assuming that the narrative is accurate, it raises the following questions:

1. WHO LEAKED THE INFORMATION?: Dr. Fauci is the only person who comes out looking good, and he has plenty of motive, so the initial reaction is that it must have been him. The article preemptively tells us that he didn’t speak to the authors, however. I’m guess that it was a friend or associate of his.
2. IS BIRX TO BLAME?: Her models clearly played an important role in this farce, but they assumed that Trump and the other politicians would behave responsibly and stay the course. Garbage in, garbage out.
3. IS TRUMP THE ONE PRIMARILY AT FAULT?: Leave aside the fact that he is ultimately responsible for his own government, and that he repeatedly undercut the message by encouraging irresponsibility. As with the Russian bounty story, the real problem here is that the people around him have learned not to tell him things he doesn’t want to hear in order to maintain their influence. That’s a real danger for our country. If you don’t believe it, just show me where the WMD were in Iraq.