Cromwell

The eminent conservative Edmund Burke was once quoted as saying that society was a partnership of the dead, the living, and the unborn.  What he meant by that was that we live on the intellectual and physical capital given to us by our ancestors, and we thus have a moral obligation to pass on that, and perhaps a bit more, to succeeding generations.  Risky experiments that threaten the species’ inheritance are not, therefore, a good idea.

The current GOP clearly does not believe that.  The Trump tax cut essentially is an invitation to party today at the expense of our children, who will have to deal with the implications of a much larger deficit.  The GOP’s stance on climate change is to do nothing in the face of pending disaster because it might reduce our standard of living slightly in the short run.  It’s the opposite of conservatism.

 

Trump apparently told the world today that he would have run into the school to protect the students even if he didn’t have a weapon.

How could he, with the bone spurs that kept him out of the military?

Billy Graham learned fairly early on in his remarkable life that it was a mistake to drag religion into partisan politics.  It was ironic, then, that a few days after Graham’s death, a man named David Brody had a column in the NYT that essentially said that Trump, regardless of his personal weaknesses, was the evangelical movement’s best friend, because he delivered consistently on the “macro” level.

Evangelical Christianity, at this rate, is becoming the white nationalist wing of the GOP at prayer. That has two impacts, both extremely negative, on our country. From a political perspective, it means that the left is viewed not just as misguided, but as the devil’s spawn, which makes compromise and bipartisanship much more difficult.  On the religious side, the association with Trump is bound to accelerate the decline of Christianity in this country, particularly with younger people.

With his fixation on “macro” issues for Christians, Brody is basically saying that Christians aren’t out to save souls;  they’re just another right-wing interest group, like the NRA and the Chamber of Commerce, protecting their own endangered sphere and imposing their views on the rest of us by force.  They will pay for it in the end, and, in all likelihood, so will we.

In the winter of 1984, Sarajevo was the center of the sports world.  It is where Katarina Witt and Torvill and Dean worked their magic.  Eight years later, it was a war zone, and the Olympic facilities were nothing more than a macabre reminder of what had been.  The city is still trying to recover today.

The same fate, only exponentially worse, could befall Pyeongchang, and soon. The best solution to the conundrum has always been a Chinese-inspired coup, but that doesn’t seem to be on the table.  Barring that, the only hope for Korea is for Trump’s ability to blame his predecessors for his failure to stop the North Korean nuclear program to overcome his desire to lash out and salve his wounded pride.

If you live in Korea, and that’s all you have going for you, you should be very worried.

For the better part of the George W. Bush administration, the CDs were riding high.  Compassionate conservatism was in vogue at home, and the country was promoting democracy abroad.  Then it all came crashing down;  the Iraq War was a disaster, the economy tanked, and the CDs took the blame.  The Republican Party turned right, and “compassion” came to be viewed as foolish or wimpy. That’s where we are today;  the CD faction in Congress can be counted on your digits.

As I’ve noted before, the demise of the CDs is directly tied to the rise of partisan gridlock, and is unhealthy for this country.  Can it be reversed?

Yes, and history tells us how.  Newt Gingrich and his Fox-friendly crowd were a dress rehearsal for Trump.  They overreached and were punished for it at the ballot box.  Bush was supposed to be the antidote for that.

In other words, it’s fairly simple.   If Trump somehow succeeds, the GOP will continue to follow his lead.  If he fails spectacularly, the party will turn on him and go in a completely different direction.  The final decision will be in the hands of the voters.

Day after day, I post about the ideological divisions in the Republican Party.  At some point, you may wonder exactly what it is that keeps the GOP together. What is the lowest common denominator?

Tax cuts.  CLs and PBPs love them, and the other two factions acquiesce in exchange for conservative social legislation.  That is the bargain which keeps the GOP a single party.

Abortion runs second.  Only the CLs have a principled objection to abortion restrictions, and the fact is that there are relatively few voters who identify with CL ideology on social issues.  Even Rand Paul, who toes the libertarian line on drugs, has problems with abortion.  As a result, the party, as a practical matter, is relatively united on that front.

That’s pretty much it, which is why the GOP struggles to do very much other than cut taxes when it is in power.

Madison didn’t believe that a bill of rights was necessary, but, having promised one during the ratification process, he thought it was essential to deliver, and he did.  The Second Amendment was obviously part of that process.

The Second Amendment was a product of the issues of the day.  Many Americans who opposed the Constitution were concerned that the increase in federal power would result in the creation of a large standing army, which in turn would represent a threat to individual liberty.   Madison wanted to assure those people that militias would remain a viable alternative to a standing army in order to build confidence in the new system.  The Second Amendment was designed for that purpose.

I think it is fair to say that Madison would be shocked at the notion that the government was powerless to protect school children from automatic weapons as a result of his hard work.

Here’s where the factions stand on gun control legislation:

CLs:  Increasing the power of the state to reduce individual liberty is always wrong.

Reactionaries:  God, guns, and guts made America great.  You have succeeded in taking God out of the public sphere, but you will never have my gun.  Never.

PBPs:  We don’t really care, but we rely on Reactionaries and CLs for support on tax cuts.  This is payback.

CDs:  Jesus didn’t exactly promote gun ownership and the slaughter of children in the New Testament.

And so, on this, as on so many issues, the party is divided, but the Reactionaries, as the largest faction, drive the train.

In a post some years back, I posed a question about how Jeffersonian principles should be applied in a Hamiltonian world.  The question was appropriate, because Jefferson’s vision of America, while accurate and eminently successful in the short run, clearly failed in the longer term.  We do not today live in a country of small, independent, yeoman farmers.

For Madison, on the other hand, there was a place for everything in America, as long as the overall picture was balanced.  He didn’t have the issues with cities, manufacturers, and merchants that Jefferson did;  he simply didn’t want them to run the country unchecked.  He also believed that reasonable people could disagree without being personally disagreeable, and that politics was an essentially rational business.

Barack Obama was a Madisonian through and through.  Donald Trump, alas, in his own perverted way, is a Hamiltonian.  The two represent the national superego and id, respectively.  They will probably do battle in perpetuity.

The nation is a better place when Madison’s heirs are in charge, but that only happens intermittently.

Make no mistake–the NRA is an obnoxious organization.  It takes extreme positions, and hardly ever backs down.  It appears to think guns belong everywhere:  stadiums; bars; schools, whatever.  It continues to generate new access issues in order to give itself a reason for existence.  It contributes practically nothing positive to American society.

And yet, it is not to blame for the legislative deadlock on gun issues, because it doesn’t spend that much money on lobbying.  It doesn’t have to.  The NRA is successful because a large percentage of the Reactionary faction of the GOP views guns, not as objects, but icons:  symbols of strength, cultural pride, traditional religious beliefs, individualism, and limited government.  Taking away guns is similar to spitting on the cross for these people.

That is why it is so hard for them to compromise, even in the face of repeated school massacres.  You can make deals about objects, but symbols are a different matter altogether.

I think I can say with complete assurance that Alexander Hamilton would have despised Donald Trump:  his laziness; his lack of intellectual curiosity; his corruption; his empty egotism; his tinpot authoritarianism; and his lack of principles.  To Hamilton, Trump would have been a third-rate version of Burr, who, at least, had a valid claim to be a war hero.

It has to be conceded, however, that the two do have some things in common:  a New York background; a chip on their respective shoulders; a flair for publicity; and a taste for good-looking women.  With Madison, however, Trump had absolutely zero in common.  You can be sure that Madison would have despised him, too.

For the modest, reserved, hyper-rational Madison, the Trump parade would have been the last straw.  It represents everything he feared and tried to prevent in American politics.

Wilbur Ross has given Trump three choices on aluminum and steel imports: targeted tariffs; across-the-board tariffs; and import quotas.  Option four, of course, would be to do nothing.  Which will he choose?

Any of the first three options, of course, will probably start a trade war.  It will drive up prices of American goods, damage our relationships with our allies, and invite retaliation, thereby costing jobs, not saving them.  On the other hand, protectionism plays well with at least a large part of his base.  In any battle between tribal loyalty and the national interest, you can be fairly sure that the former will prevail in this administration.

Trump has already shown that his favorite negotiating tactic is to take hostages and blame the other side when he shoots them.  I would expect him to announce that import quotas will be imposed if the rest of the world doesn’t clean up its act, in his eyes, within a specified number of days.  Then we will move to what I think is his end game–managed trade.

My wife and I saw “Hamilton” in Chicago in September.  I thought the show got off to a slow start and the audience was far too easy to please (it is an icon of the resistance, after all).  It just kept getting better and better, however.  By the time it was over, I had concluded that the hype was more than justified, and that the show was well worth its high price.

If you haven’t seen it, here are some additional observations:

1.  Initially, you are very aware of the all minority cast, but that wears off, and you barely notice it at the end.  I’m guessing that’s the way Miranda wanted it.
2.  The show is factually accurate, but some of the timelines are misleading in an effort to improve the plot.  That probably bothers me more than most.
3.  “Jefferson” didn’t at all resemble the actual historical figure.  It occurred to me shortly afterwards that the actor was playing him as a different Jefferson–George, from the ’70s sitcom.   I’m confident I wasn’t wrong about that.  It was very funny, in retrospect.

If you have a chance to see it, by all means, go.

Thomas Friedman had a column in yesterday’s NYT in which he asserted that Trump’s behavior towards Russia has only two possible explanations:  either Trump is hopelessly naive about Putin, or his economic interests have exposed him to blackmail by the Russian government.  For a centrist who ostentatiously positioned himself above party during the Obama years, this is strong stuff.  Is he right?

The fact is, we don’t know.  We may never know.  Mueller has more information than anyone, and he isn’t sharing much of it with us, yet.  However, I think Friedman has disregarded a more obvious motive for Trump’s actions:  he can’t act against Russian interference because to do so would be an implicit admission that the Russians helped him, which in turn would taint his election victory.

In short, protecting his ego is far more important than protecting the national interest.  That will be a recurring theme in this administration.

When Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote “Hamilton,” Obama was in the White House, and immigration was less visible as an issue than it is today.  As a result, Miranda’s decision to employ an all minority cast was less a political statement than an attempt to provide some context and contemporary relevance to Hamilton’s life.  It mostly succeeds.  You can’t realistically argue that the Founding Fathers who were planters were parvenus, except in the eyes of the people who mattered in London, but you certainly can say that Hamilton himself fit the bill.  It is, in fact, hard to avoid the conclusion that Hamilton joined the Patriot cause largely because it gave him his best, and possibly only, chance of being a major figure in American society.

In 2018, things are very different.  “Hamilton” has become an icon of the resistance as the result of a changed and charged climate on immigration and racial issues.  I imagine that Miranda both embraces that and regrets it.