Cromwell

Personally, I think the statute of limitations on the alleged attempted drunken rape has expired.   Kavanaugh was nominated to be a Supreme Court justice, not a saint, and re-examining his behavior as a high school student is, to me, a stretch.  But assume I’m wrong.  How would you go about trying to find out whether this episode actually happened or not?

Well, duh.  You would have law enforcement do a real investigation, including interviewing all of the possible witnesses.  What you wouldn’t do is parade the two protagonists in front of a group of grandstanding politicians who have every reason to play to the camera and who have already made up their minds for self-interested reasons.

What we are going to have is political theater at its worst.  The GOP will be trying to destroy Ms. Ford’s credibility without looking like misogynists and thereby losing even more female votes in November.  Will they succeed?  My guess is that 99 percent of America has already taken sides on that issue, and it won’t matter much.

In the end, it all revolves around Donald Trump, which is just the way he likes it.  He barely reads bullet points, let alone books, so you don’t want to give him too much credit for having a coherent political philosophy, but the question is inescapable:  does he support liberal democracy in America, or not?

Just look at the criteria in Monday’s post and the record.  This is a man who refers to all of the media who do not support him uncritically as “enemies of the people,” who believes that the job of the Attorney General is to prosecute his political opponents, who supports ongoing GOP efforts to suppress voting by minorities, who is bitterly and openly critical of judges who rule against him, who has advocated discrimination against Muslims, and who insists against all of the evidence and centuries of experience that the “deep state” (i.e., government officials who actually comply with the law) has “rigged” the system against him.  What do you think?

I know I write about this all of the time, but it will take less than you think to turn the US into an “illiberal democracy.”  History shows that public disbelief that the system can change so dramatically will be Trump’s greatest ally if and when the struggle begins in earnest.  Heightening consciousness of the problem on a regular basis is, therefore, a necessity.

As we know, Bernie Sanders believes that a class-based “revolution” can inspire millions of reluctant voters to come to the polls to support a much larger welfare state and new controls on capitalists.  It didn’t happen for Bernie in 2016, it hasn’t happened in the past, and it probably won’t happen in 2020.

But can Trump’s obnoxious actions and rhetoric about women and minorities result in a different kind of “revolution,” based on identity politics?  Texas will give us a clue.  If Beto can beat Cruz, there may be something to it.

I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it, but it’s not impossible.

On the Trump nominee known as Brett.

A win’s still a pretty good bet.

The prez has his back

And he’s on the attack.

You wonder how ugly it gets.

 

Can a liberal state thrive without democracy?  Yes, indeed.  Look at the US and the UK in the nineteenth century; both were prosperous liberal states without universal adult suffrage.

Can democracy thrive without the checks of liberalism?  In Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, we’re apparently going to find out.  The first indications aren’t very encouraging.  The line between illiberal democracy and fascism is very thin.

Trump is often referred to as a “reality show president,” and with good reason.  The constant drama, the deliberate use of cliffhangers, and the constant churn of characters are all characteristics of reality shows.

There are other TV influences in his presidency, however.  His use of his Twitter feed to trigger the libs and reinforce the bond with his base sounds a lot like regular Fox News programming.  Call it “Trump & Friends.”

 

Donald Trump absolutely loves tariffs, and you can see why.  Part of it, obviously, is mercantilism, but mostly it is because they give him arbitrary power over the entire world.  Simply by saying the magic words “national security,” he can force domestic businessmen and foreign leaders alike to come to him and beg for favorable treatment, which he can bestow or not, depending on his whim.  What better way exists to make himself the center of attention and to boost his ego, short of a successful nuclear war?

None of that is surprising.  What is surprising is the reaction of the markets, which have reacted to the violation of every traditional red line by doing . . . nothing.  One has to assume that they have no idea to price Trump’s threats to the international system, so they have just decided to ignore them and focus on the joys of tax cuts and deregulation.  How long will that last?  Until there is a genuine geopolitical or financial crisis, and then, watch out–his credibility with the investing public, for a variety of reasons, will be zero.

One sees the argument that liberal democracy has failed fairly frequently these days.  The basis for the argument is that virtually all LDs have experienced slow growth and higher levels of inequality over the last few decades.

But is it true?  I would say no, for the following reasons:

1.  As I noted before, what alternative system has generated higher levels of growth, other than China?  Would you really rather live in the land of Uighur camps?
2.  Focusing just on the last few decades is a mistake.  Over a longer period of time, LD has brought unprecedented prosperity to America and to Europe.
3.  LD is not just, or even primarily, a cash machine.  The quality of life that it brings–the freedom to think and experience life as you see fit, so long as you don’t injure your neighbor–is far more important.  There is no substitute for that, regardless of the levels of growth or the workings of the welfare state.
4. In any event, LD is not responsible for policy mistakes.  There is no guarantee in any political system that the powers-that-be will make wise decisions.  Blame the politicians, not the system.

By most definitions, I’m a baby boomer, but I never felt like one.  To me, a proper boomer is someone whose formative years included the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the Summer of Love, Chicago in 1968, and Woodstock.  I was way too young for any of that;  my formative years featured Watergate, inflation, Jimmy Carter, and the Iran hostage crisis.  It’s not the same thing at all;  real boomers thought they had the divine right to change the world, but my cohort just wanted to survive it.

Donald Trump was born in 1946; he is, therefore, unquestionably a boomer.  To what extent does he reflect values and personality traits typically associated with boomers, and how, if at all, does he deviate from them?

His self-absorption and rejection of conventional sexual morality are boomer traits.  His complete lack of idealism, on the other hand, sets him far apart from the rest of his generation.  Did he ever even see “The Graduate?”  He would have been the guy saying “Plastics,” not the innocent protagonist.

The end of history is not nigh; there are plenty of critiques of liberal democracy, including the following:

1.  God has revealed his truth to the world, including how to organize and run government.  The purpose of government is to please God, not mankind.  This is the theocratic model.  Nothing in the syllogism is self-evident or acceptable to liberals.

2.  The vast majority of the people are way too stupid to run their own affairs.  They will plunder the rich, run the country into the ground, or both.  Only the educated and refined people should have a real say in the operation of the government.  The oligarchical model made more sense before education became universal and information became so easily available.  Today, if you were trying to define a proper oligarchy, you would have a tough time laying out the boundaries.

3.  Liberal democracy never results in complete and perfect equality.  Guilty as charged!  History teaches us that the cost of creating a perfectly equal society far exceeds its benefits.  And, for what it’s worth, even communist countries never came close to the ideal.  A large welfare state is, however, perfectly consistent with LD.

4.  Liberal democracy overemphasizes the rational parts of people and puts inadequate emphasis on their emotional needs.  Patriotism, solidarity, security, the need for drama, spectacle, and glory, and the desire to identify with a strong leader are fatally neglected.  This is the fascist model.  A liberal democrat would point out in response that the LD model leaves people free to find emotional satisfaction almost anywhere they want, so the charge is not completely correct.  And anyway, when has fascism worked well for anyone except the leadership?

5.  Liberal democracy in the 21st century leaves the country open to subversion and defeat by other, more closed societies.  Call this the Chinese model.  It is true that liberal democracies, with a great deal of assistance from the Soviet Union, managed to transform their political and economic systems sufficiently to win World War II, and then revert back to something like normal thereafter.  It can be argued, however, that 21st century technology doesn’t give us the same kind of breathing space that we had in the 1940s;  the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, for example, do not protect us from cyberwarfare.  How does this critique turn out?  Let’s hope we don’t find out.

For decades, the frustrating and tiresome ritual with a Supreme Court nominee has gone as follows:

1.  The nominee refuses to answer legitimate questions about his judicial philosophy.
2.  Given the importance of the nomination, and with no effective way to oppose it in light of #1, the party out of power engages in a war of personal destruction.
3.  The nominee is approved, anyway.
4.  Everyone is bitter about the experience.  Rinse and repeat.

The allegations of sexual assault here are serious enough to be disqualifying, assuming they were proven, if they had occurred while Kavanaugh was working for Ken Starr, or at the White House, or as a judge.  But . . . high school?  Seriously?

At some point, this needs to stop.  Nominees should be willing to answer the real questions, and the personal destruction should come to an end.

As I see it, here are the fundamental premises of liberal democracy:

1. Government is a man-made construct designed to provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.  The powers that be are not there by divine right, but are subject to change in the interest of the public as a whole.
2.  To the extent that truth can completely be known, it is as the result of freedom of inquiry and discussion, not revelation or conquest.
3.  Human nature being imperfect, it is too dangerous to entrust arbitrary power to any one person or any group of people.
4.  A large group of people is generally wiser, in the long run, than a small group or a single individual.
5.  The interests and feelings of all individuals are of equal value to the state.

As a result, all working liberal democracies have the following features:

1. A depoliticized criminal justice system;
2. All persons are equal under the law;
3. At least some free and independent media;
4. A written or unwritten constitution that is enforceable by the judiciary against the government;
5. Freedom of religion, speech, and association;
6. Fair elections;
7. Universal adult suffrage; and
8. Protection for private property rights.

These features leave open a lot of discretion relative to policy and the precise nature of any particular government’s machinery.  A liberal democracy can have a presidential or a parliamentary system; it may be largely capitalist or socialist; it may result in great or minimal inequality; it may have important anti-democratic elements, or not; and it may provide for some public media, or not.  Theocracy, communism, and fascism, however, cannot be logically reconciled with it.

The merits of liberal democracy are currently being debated to an extent not seen in the recent past.  Its perceived weaknesses will be the topic of tomorrow’s post.

Violent crime is way down in this country from the levels seen in, say, the 1980s.  And yet, the GOP can’t stop talking about it; campaign commercials all over the country are full of it.  Why?

Part of it, of course, is to emphasize the GOP’s status as the swaggering daddy party that kicks the butts of the evil outsiders.  In the absence of a conspicuously successful war against a foreign enemy, that will have to suffice.  But part of it is a reflection of what is on TV.  The local news everywhere I go is dominated by stories about crime, and, of course, so is the entertainment programming.  No wonder people have the inaccurate impression that criminals are running wild in the streets; in the virtual world, they are.

In the end, the Great Recession was attributable to greed and negligence.  Greed, of course, is always with us, and is the engine that drives the capitalist train.  The negligence was on the part of risk managers, ratings agencies, and to some extent, the government and its regulatory agencies.  That part was not inevitable.

The responses by the American and European governments were fundamentally different.  In the US, the response of the Obama administration was based on Keynesian principles, and while you could certainly argue that it was too weak, and that Obama had his FDR in 1937 moment in 2010, the economy recovered fairly quickly, unemployment fell, and the Democrats won in 2012.  The Trump victory in 2016 was accomplished with three million less votes than Clinton, and was due more to the perceived weaknesses of the Democratic candidate and the normal bored dissatisfaction with eight years of Democratic rule than the desire for a counterrevolution.  In Europe, on the other hand, austerity was the order of the day, recovery was halting, and the governments paid the price for it.  Even there, however, the growth of illiberal democracy was more attributable to issues with immigration from the Middle East and Africa than to slow growth.

To put it another way, unemployment was at four percent in the US at the time of the 2016 election.  Do you believe the result of that election would have been different if a few bankers had gone to jail in 2010, or if a faster recovery (with more stimulus) had caused the unemployment rate in 2011 to be a point or two lower?  I don’t think so; people vote based on where they are now, not five years ago.

And so, in response to my question, the bad guys don’t always have to win after a financial crisis; after all, FDR won in 1936, 1940, and 1944.  The success of right-wing populists over the last few years wasn’t primarily due to the Great Recession.  That said, the following things annoyed me then, and still do:

1.  I don’t agree with the critics of Paulsen, Bernanke, and Geithner, who complain that their successful efforts to prevent a collapse on the scale of the Great Depression just led to more inequality.  That’s true, but preventing inequality was not their job; they already had plenty on their plate.  That was up to the Obama administration and Congress.
2. Because greed and negligence were pervasive in the system, it really doesn’t bother me that no bankers went to jail.  What does piss me off, however, is that no one from Wall Street ever expressed any remorse or held himself accountable for what happened to the nation as a whole, and no one showed any gratitude for the bailouts.  Practically the minute the immediate crisis was over, Wall Street was whining about overregulation and a lack of respect and working to undermine the new system even though the market was soaring.  They should have considered themselves lucky under the circumstances that they weren’t nationalized in exchange for the bailouts.
3. A fairly large segment of the American public permitted itself to be persuaded that the real problem in the country was with poor people and illegal immigrants, not the people who actually caused the economic mess.  This, of course, was stoked by GOP propaganda.  As a result, the populist anger of 2010 was, in the longer run, actually turned into a vehicle controlled by the financial institutions who created the problems in the first place for the purpose of dismantling the new regulatory system.  In that sense, the bad guys truly did win, at least until the next crisis, at which time the GOP will have great difficulty swallowing its past rhetoric and supporting any bailouts, and the country as a whole will suffer for it.

Like many other Republicans before him, Donald Trump promised to “run government like a business” when he was elected.  Has he kept his promise?

Not all businesses are created equal.  The Trump Organization is not exactly GM.  As a businessman, Trump shamelessly sought publicity, screwed over his contractors and investors, took extreme positions in negotiations, took pride in his unpredictability and his ability to change positions on a dime, was accountable to no one but himself, and sucked up to Russians with money.

In other words, yes, he is running the government in the same way that he ran his business.  Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.