Cromwell

Reactionaries aren’t libertarians; they are happy to support a strong central government as long as it enforces their values. Reactionary t-shirts, flags, and bumper stickers, however, often feature a libertarian theme. How can these two facts be reconciled?

Reactionaries believe that, in the natural and correct order of things, government assists them in the legal imposition of their “order and orthodoxy.” As they see it, the primary problem with the federal government is that it prohibits them from doing exactly that. And so, the circle can be squared; refusing to permit Reactionaries to impose their will on society is in itself a form of governmental oppression to be resisted at all costs.

“White privilege” is clearly a core concept of wokeness. So what does it mean?

It can be a very elastic idea. I thought the NYT was coming to my rescue when it ran a lengthy article about it yesterday. Unfortunately, the article was windy, tedious, and of little assistance.

To the best of my knowledge, “white privilege” is typically used in these contexts:

1. White people live off wealth created by, and stolen from, African-Americans as a result of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, etc.
2. White men typically feel they have the right to dominate in social situations.
3. White people demand, and typically receive, better service from both public and private sector providers than African-Americans.
4. White people get more lenient treatment from law enforcement and the criminal justice system than African-Americans.

#1 is the case for reparations, which I have discussed on many occasions and will not repeat here. #2 and #3 revolve around particularized situations and don’t lend themselves to my analysis; all I can say is that I personally don’t ever remember demanding or receiving special treatment from anyone. #4 is a serious and legitimate problem, but calling it “white privilege” is a conceptual mistake.

“White privilege” assumes that unfair treatment by the police and the judicial system is the baseline, and that people who are actually treated properly are being given a special break. Our system is not designed to work that way; everyone is legally entitled to the same level of treatment. If, as it seems clear, African-Americans are being singled out for unfair treatment, instead of fatalistically attributing that to “white privilege,” we all should be demanding improvements to the system. Using “white privilege” as an explanation for the inevitability of unequal protection is both obnoxious and a guarantee that things will never get better.

Here’s what we know about the Democratic candidates for president two weeks before the second debate:

1. Biden is an eminently fallible frontrunner, but enjoys the strong support of moderate and elderly voters;
2. Warren and Sanders are in a struggle for the limited number of fundi votes. Warren has the higher ceiling, but will have difficulty winning over Bernie Bros;
3. Based on his fundraising success, Mayor Pete has emerged as the most likely Biden replacement candidate over the more qualified Klobuchar and Booker;
4. Harris has shown impressive campaigning skills, but has not clearly decided whether to run as a realo or a fundi. The votes for her are most likely on the realo side; and
5. The other candidates don’t really matter much.

The only real surprise here is #3. I still think Booker has a chance, but he needs to establish himself as a viable Biden replacement candidate quickly, or his window will be closed.

NASA is a public agency, and the landing was a government project funded with large sums of public money. The question for today is, would today’s GOP even consider expanding government in that manner?

You know the answer to that as well as I do. Today’s GOP would assign the task to the private sector, which, of course, would have accomplished it far more efficiently. LOL.

You can make a reasonable argument that all of the parties got what they wanted out of this episode. The Squad got lots of attention; Pelosi got an issue she could use to unify the party; and Trump was able to mobilize his base. Same old, same old.

I think Trump’s calculations were wrong, however. Outrageous statements which mobilize the base only really work if they provoke an overreaction from the left, which helps with swing voters. In this case, the racism was extremely obvious, and the response was not disproportionate. I think it cost him votes from the center that he will need, whether he knows it or not, in 2020.

Members of the Squad apparently don’t like the analogy to the House Freedom Caucus, but it is fair; both are small groups of self-righteous ideological extremists who make life miserable for the leadership by creating obstacles to the ordinary day-to-day operation of government. The difference between the two is one of scale; the HFC has more votes, and therefore more clout, than the Squad.

The factional phenomenon is not limited to the US. The Conservative Party has the ERG, which operates largely as a party within a party. The number of factions within Labour is growing, too. What is going on here?

The answer is social media. In the past, if you were a backbencher, the only way to make a name for yourself was to shut up, follow the leadership, and wait your turn. Today, rookies with large followings on Twitter feel entitled to chart their own course. And they do.

So how does this end? When the backbenchers slowly come to realize that retweets are not the same as votes, and that mobilizing the blue base in California doesn’t win you any seats in Montana, where you actually need them.

She’s better than Bernie, but not to the point of being woke.

Sanders is essentially a Marxist. He views politics as being a manifestation of the class struggle. Identity politics, for him, are at best an annoying distraction, and at worst are an effort by a ruling plutocratic class to divide the working class. As a result, he writes columns like the one in the WaPo last week in which he argued that the best way to resolve racial issues is to rein in the economic and political power of the one percent.

That, of course, means that African-Americans have to view reactionary white workers as being their allies, and invisible people on Wall Street as their enemies. That is both counterintuitive and the antithesis of being woke.

Warren is not a Marxist, and is more intellectually flexible than Sanders on racial issues. She is capable of having a discussion on identity issues that does not run through the class struggle. That said, she is still primarily a class-based politician, and her principal enemies are rogue capitalists, not racist white workers. And so, in spite of her best efforts, you can’t really call her woke; she doesn’t believe that identity drives everything, or even the most important things.

I was just watching some video on Vox in which various Fox News hosts described AOC as stupid, deliberately ignorant of policy, corrupt, and authoritarian.

Given their unquestioning support for a man who actually does embody all of those qualities, are they really insulting her?

Vox, a fairly woke outfit, ran an article about a Kirsten Gillibrand campaign stop in Youngstown a few days ago. Gillibrand was apparently confronted by a woman who, alluding to the impacts of the closure of the Lordstown GM plant on its largely white workforce, wanted to know why Democrats liked to talk about “white privilege.” Gillibrand responded by saying that both the newly-unemployed white workers and African-Americans caught in a racist law enforcement system had legitimate grievances, and she felt everyone’s pain.

Her response was cited with approval by the writer, and it might well have been reasonable and prudent, but it wasn’t woke. A genuinely woke person would have reminded the woman that, regardless of her temporary problems with the system, she was an oppressor who lived off wealth stolen from African-Americans, and she needed to write a reparation check to them as penance.

The problem for the Democrats is that the majority of their own party, to say nothing of the electorate as a whole, isn’t woke, even though their activists generally are. The following reactions are possible:

1. Ignore the activists, play to the center, and oppose reparations altogether (Biden);
2. Try to thread the needle and offer sympathy and an ongoing discussion about reparations, but no concrete plan (Warren, Sanders);
3. Propose specific measures that look a bit like reparations, but without the side dish of guilt (Booker, Harris); or
4. Embrace the whole program, and commit electoral suicide (no one, for obvious reasons).

If you’re Ta-Nehisi Coates, the high priest of reparations, you don’t really care about getting Trump out of office; in fact, four more years of Trump outrages will probably bring you closer to your goal, so you support #4 even if it means losing in 2020. The rest of us have to worry about such lesser items as the erosion of our liberal democratic system, nuclear war, and the like; we don’t have the luxury of waiting until 2024 for relief, so discussions about reparations need to be shelved as soon as possible.

GET BACK

Saikat was a man who thought he was progressive.

He loved to call the center right.

Saikat went too far; the leadership rebuked him.

But he’s not giving up the fight.

________________

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, Saikat!

___________________

AOC’s the model of a lefty woman.

She’s the queen of Twitter, now.

She insists Pelosi had it coming to her

But she can’t get the votes, no how.

___________________________

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, get back

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, AOC!

Parody of “Get Back” by The Beatles.

The right unquestionably won the Israeli election a few months ago. However, Netanyahu was unable to broker a deal between the nationalist and ultra-religious elements of the right, so the election is essentially being rerun. The Israeli public, I suspect, is not thrilled.

Who will be blamed for the impasse? Bibi is the luckiest man in Israel, and the voters for religious parties have no real alternatives, so I’m predicting that the nationalists will take the hit. Likud will win seats away from them, the religious parties will get their way, and the deal will ultimately be made.

In light of Trump’s most recent tweets, I need to begin this post by saying that there is genuine racism emanating from this administration that anyone can recognize, whether woke or not. The general condemnation of those tweets was completely appropriate.

With that behind me, consider the plight of the truly woke straight white man. He has been identified as an oppressor by virtue of his identity, regardless of any actual oppressive behavior on his part. He accepts his guilt. What is he to do to pay for his original sin?

I suppose he could start by liquidating all of his wealth and giving it to the African-Americans from whom he allegedly stole it. Since even woke people will be reluctant to go that far, there are two things he can do to show his solidarity with oppressed people that are unlikely to cost him anything:

1. GIVE VOCAL SUPPORT TO REPARATIONS FOR ALL OPPRESSED GROUPS. This includes, at a minimum, African-Americans, Native Americans, and gay people. The good news is that this is a blank check which is unlikely to be cashed in the future, as the vast majority of Americans are unwoke and will never accept reparations. His money is safe for the foreseeable future.
2. JOIN TWITTER MOBS SUPPORTING OPPRESSED PEOPLE. Serena Williams and Beyoncé in particular are women of color who are icons, not merely celebrities. Any criticism of them must clearly be inspired by racism. Weigh in and join the millions threatening vengeance whenever they are slighted, regardless of the reason.

It’s not enough, of course, but what else can he do? Identity is not a matter of choice. The only real solution would be suicide.

At its simplest level, being woke means being sensitive to any action or statement by a straight white person (usually male) which appears to treat anyone who is a person of color, engages in unconventional sexual practices, or is female as an inferior. It is a form of heightened consciousness filtered through history.

In its purest form, wokeness is an all-encompassing world view, similar in its way to Marxism, which revolves around issues of identity rather than class. You could call it identity determinism. As the story goes, straight white men inevitably oppress people of color, and falsely attribute whatever success they have in life to their own efforts instead of their ability to steal from oppressed groups, simply because they are straight white men. The phenomenon exists regardless of income, education, or any other variable. Hence the electoral success of Donald Trump, and his high degree of support among white people; they were just doing what comes naturally to them.

Here are some of the characteristics of wokeness:

1. A woke person completely rejects the conventional and comfortable narrative tying American history to freedom and progress. To a woke person, America is, and always has been, a land of oppression. The Declaration of Independence was a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy, the Constitution enshrined existing racial prejudices into our system of government, and Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement were failures, as evidenced by the wealth gap separating white people and people of color. The rest of the story doesn’t really matter in the big picture.
2. There is a hierarchy of wokeness, with discrimination against African-Americans at the top. The grievances of women, gay people, and other minority groups get lower priority, although they are not completely ignored. White women in particular can be viewed as oppressors in some contexts.
3. To the extent there is a remedy for hundreds of years of unmitigated oppression, it is through reparations. Reparations for African-Americans get most of the publicity, of course, but there have been proposals to extend the concept to Native Americans and gay people, as well.

So what can you do if you’re white and woke? I will post on that tomorrow.

The next week will be dedicated to an analysis of the Great Awokening! So check your white privilege at the door and read on! It’ll be great!

Trust me. Trust me.

(Donald Trump has reconvened the meeting of his fellow strongmen at his DC hotel. Erdogan is the first to arrive.)

E: Mr. President! Good to see you!

T: Good to see you, too! Sorry about the election loss in Istanbul. I guess the fake news got you.

E: Yes, and the high interest rates, too. They cause inflation and screw up the economy, you know. You would understand more than most.

T: True. Anyway, feel free to drown your sorrows. We’re having two-for=one at the bar.

E: I’ll pass, for now. (He heads off. Putin arrives.)

T: Vlad the Impaler! What’s up, bro? How’s my favorite Russian!

P: Very well, thank you. Congratulations on beating Mueller, although I must say, it took longer than expected.

T: It’s the rigged system. You know how it is. It’s not as if I gave you anything in exchange for your help.

P: Yeah, and we need to talk about that. You owe me. When are you going to do something about those sanctions?

T: Just wait until I’m re-elected. Then I’m free to do anything I want.

P: I’ve been waiting for a long time, you know. I’m tired of the excuses about your democratic system. It’s time to be a real strongman and show some balls.

(Duterte has entered the room.)

T: Rodrigo, you son-of-a-bitch! Welcome!

D: Trump, you son-of-a-whore! Good to be here!

T: I have a question for you. You’ve killed thousands of people–not that they don’t deserve it–and yet your polls are sky high. How do you do it?

D: Just ignore the fake news and stick to your guns. Literally.

P: See! There’s a man who understands what it means to be a strongman! If you see a problem, get rid of it!

(Xi has arrived with a large entourage.)

T: There’s my Chinaman! What’s up with the posse?

X: We’re all staying at your hotel. It enriches you personally and reduces the trade deficit.

T: Hey, great idea!

X: We know how the game is played. We weren’t born yesterday. We’ve been dealing with barbarians for thousands of years.

T: So when are you going to end the trade war?

X: When are YOU going to end the trade war? We can’t even figure out what you really want.

T: I love being unpredictable. It’s my stock in trade. The base loves it.

X: It also makes negotiations difficult. When are you going to tell us your bottom line?

T: You never know. Maybe now, maybe later. We’ll see.

(The last guest has arrived. The room erupts.)

ALL: Kim! (Once again, it sounds like they’re greeting Norm at Cheers.)

T: Little Rocketman! Glad you could make it!

K: Is Dennis here?

T: I tried to get him, but he’s still pissed off at me for being fired on “The Apprentice.” I bought you something instead.

(He gives Kim a framed photo of a nuclear test from the fifties.)

K: I love it! A foreshadowing, perhaps?

T: Yes, but where? That’s the real question. (Kim wanders off; Trump goes to the microphone.)

T: OK, people, I have some special entertainment lined up for you, including a special guest! (He opens the door, and out walks . . . MBS.)

MBS: Tonight, we’re going to watch a movie that not many people have seen before. I call it “The Last Moments of Khashoggi.”

P: This is going to be awesome!

E: I’m out of here. (The rest stay and enjoy the movie.)