Every student of revolutionary politics learns early on that one of the principal tasks of the revolutionaries is to force the vast number of people who prefer to sit on the sidelines to take sides. This is frequently done by doing outrageous things and provoking a disproportionate response from the establishment.
Does this sound familiar? That’s the way Trump does business on a daily basis.
Borderline
Something ’bout those refugees drives my supporters nuts.
So I have to keep them in your country, no matter what.
Stop playing with our hearts.
I’ll finish what you start
When we finally build the wall.
If you want to pick a fight
I’ll be here to say goodnight.
I really don’t fear you at all.
Just try to understand.
I’ve given all I can.
You can’t get the best of me.
Borderline.
Some say I’ve already lost my mind.
You just keep on pushing rapists over the borderline.
(Repeat)
Parody of “Borderline” by Madonna.
As I predicted a long time ago, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court decisions and upheld the travel ban in Trump v. Hawaii. In doing so, the Court chose to essentially prioritize the president’s powers in matters of national security over rights created by the Establishment Clause.
The case revolved around Trump’s public statements about a Muslim ban. Justices Roberts and Kennedy made oblique, and ultimately ineffectual, efforts to show that they were still on the side of the angels; the majority opinion overrules Korematsu, while Kennedy made some strained and almost pathetic comments about how incredibly important it is for public officials to follow the Constitution even when there is no judicial check on them. The message is “We may have concerns about Trump, but we’re not part of the resistance–you’re on your own with that.”
I was watching a PBS program about America in World War I last night. Part of the program, naturally, was about the Sedition Act and the other measures that were used to crack down on dissent during the war. Naturally, the question arises: what happens if Trump manufactures a foreign policy crisis and then demands limits on our civil liberties in the name of national security? Can we rely on the Court to protect us, or will the justices simply wring their hands and do nothing, like Ryan and McConnell?
After yesterday, the answer is fairly clear. And don’t think for a minute that it can’t happen here, because it has before.
There is an element of the blue base which believes that civility amounts to unilateral disarmament in the face of Trump’s provocations. Leaving aside that uncivil behavior inevitably provokes an angry right-wing backlash, the fact of the matter is that Trumpism is the enemy to be vanquished in November–not just Trump himself. Replacing right-wing Trumpism with a left-wing version of the same thing would not be much of an accomplishment.
And so, being civil is not unilateral disarmament, and it is not simply the right thing to do; it is the very essence of the struggle for liberal democratic values which should be at the heart of the campaign.
Imagine that you are Donald Trump contemplating the GOP’s strategy for the midterm elections. You know that you are facing a highly motivated blue base. It’s far too late to move to the center to win over centrist voters, and you have no interest in doing so, anyway. Any efforts to suppress blue voters have to be done at the state level, not by you, and the time for that has passed, as well. What do you do?
The plan, obviously, is to motivate your own base. You realize that your tax cuts aren’t selling that well, and that the base is driven by anger and fear–your entire political career has been built around that. And so, the obvious points of emphasis will be:
Will it work? If I knew the answer to that, I would be living in Las Vegas, not Florida.
Erdogan, like Trump, seems determined to make Turkey great again by pissing off as many of his neighbors as possible. He called for Assad’s removal without taking the steps necessary to accomplish it; he antagonized Putin by opposing him in Syria and shooting down one of his planes; he alienated Egypt and Saudi Arabia by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood; his relationships with Israel and Greece are terrible; he consistently blames the US for all of his domestic problems; and he calls out the EU on a regular basis.
Unlike Trump, he doesn’t live in a friendly neighborhood, and he doesn’t command the world’s largest economy and strongest military.
It’s hard to see how this ends well for the Turks. Will he go the full Maduro when times get tougher, or will he change course and moderate his policies when he runs out of friends? We’ll see.
Donald Trump, of course, lives in an extremely Trumpocentric world. As a result, when he thinks about Kim, he sees a talented, ambitious young man who inherited the family business from his domineering father and made it even bigger, even in the face of a hostile world, by being clever and ruthless. Just like you know who.
The differences between running the world’s most repressive totalitarian state and the Trump Organization vastly exceed the similarities, but Trump doesn’t have the intelligence or the imagination to understand that.
Do you think Kim, for his part, views Trump as a sort of surrogate father? Somehow, I doubt it.
I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, Donald Trump blues.
You have to be aware of them; they’re all over the news.
The Donald’s spun out of control, and now I’ve got to choose.
Which demands to acquiesce, and which ones to refuse.
He doesn’t care a fig for the values that we share.
His brain is as erratic as his multi-colored hair.
I’ve pushed him and I’ve prodded him as far as I dare.
‘Cause when he tells you he’s your friend, that’s when you must beware.
I’ve got the blues.
The populist blues.
He sees the world in black and white
When it comes in many hues.
He’s bitching about deficits.
He’s got strange views on trade.
He says he’ll cut his ties with us
But we are not afraid.
But what did James Madison think about cell phones? He’s probably hanging out with Scalia now, so Gorsuch can hold a séance and ask both of them.
In my view, the decision is correct, based on changing times and conditions.
The NYT ran an article about Erdogan and his massive public works projects yesterday. It makes perfect sense; a true strongman wants to increase the size and reach of government in order to maximize his own role in the lives of his subjects and make them more dependent on him. Trump, however, has succeeded in cutting government revenues substantially with his tax cut, and is seeking to reduce the size of programs for the poor.
How do we account for this apparent paradox? There are a number of possible explanations:
The correct answer is (4): all of the above.
Donald Trump, as we know, loves being unpredictable. It gives him more freedom to change positions on a dime, and it keeps him at the center of attention. Both of those things are very important to him.
But what about his employees and hangers-on? How difficult must it be to have to completely change your story with a straight face day after day? Even the Fox News crowd must be a little bit embarrassed to argue that family separation is necessary one day, and then to hail Trump for putting an end to it the next.
He’s already starting to feel the effects of his lack of credibility; the superconservatives in the House won’t vote for an immigration bill he claims to support, because they simply don’t believe he will keep his word and give them cover against primary opponents screaming about “amnesty.”
Poor babies. My heart bleeds for them, and him.
The Supreme Court overturned years of precedent yesterday and decided that states had the authority under the Commerce Clause to tax online retailers with no physical presence within the jurisdiction. The basis for the decision was the change to the national economy created by internet sales.
That makes perfect sense, but there is more than that going on here:
I read an article a few days ago (unfortunately, I can’t place it) in which a former Obama staffer said that the anti-establishment messages of Obama and Trump, if you stripped out the latter’s racism and “America First” rhetoric, were similar. Was he right?
No. Obama had plenty of support from leaders of the Democratic establishment during the 2008 campaign, and he never attacked them. His campaign wasn’t an insurgency as much as a promise to get past Hillary’s perceived divisiveness and heal the country’s partisan wounds. Even he would concede that his efforts along those lines were a miserable failure, because it turned out that Hillary was not really exceptional, after all; the GOP views all Democratic victories as illegitimate, because Democratic voters aren’t real Americans.
Ross Douthat sees an essential continuity between Trump and Obama in that both rejected the interventionist impulses of the foreign policy establishment. Is he right?
Yes and no, but mostly no. It is true that neither is a neo-conservative, and that both want to limit the footprint of America’s military involvements overseas. Obama, however, believed in the Pax Americana; he just wanted it on the cheap, and sought to provide it through the creation of rules and the use of alliances, with American military involvement serving only as a last resort. Trump thinks the Pax Americana is for chumps, prefers the company of dictators, and threatens trade and nuclear wars to obtain leverage for bilateral deals with friends and foes alike.
On the whole, the differences are far more compelling than the similarities.
When Donald Trump thinks about the world, he only sees himself. He has no sense of reverence or his own fallibility; skyscrapers inspire him, not mighty mountains or vast deserts. People aren’t reflections of God; they are simply objects to be manipulated at his whim. Ethics and rules are a con; wealth and power are the only things that matter. The strong survive; the weak fall by the wayside; and isn’t it better that way?
This view of the universe isn’t just the complete negation of Christianity–it rejects all notions of religion–even paganism. In the end, that’s why the religious right’s embrace of him is so appalling, and why any suggestion that Trump is a “baby Christian” is so ludicrous.