Cromwell

I don’t get it.  We’re calling it radical Islamic terrorism now;  the problem was supposed to go away as soon as we had the wisdom and the strength to give it its proper name.  That being the case, why is it still happening?

Frank Bruni, a gay white man, wrote a column in Sunday’s NYT in which he addressed the argument that he enjoys “white privilege.”  If you wanted to draw the right-wing caricature of the Democratic Party, you could do far worse.

There are prominent African-Americans who believe that white people should be required to pay them reparations.  But all straight people, including African-Americans, have oppressed gay people for thousands of years–aren’t gays entitled to an offset?  What about women, who didn’t earn equal pay for equal work?  Surely everyone should owe reparations to Native Americans.  What about white people who are descended from Union soldiers who died fighting to end slavery, or white people whose ancestors immigrated after the end of slavery? What about mixed race people:  are they victims or oppressors?  The list goes on and on.

The Democratic Party needs a message of unity and uplift if it wants to win future elections.  It can’t pander to bigotry, it should rebut the false narrative that white Christians are victims, and it can’t tell white workers that they are the only America, or even the default.  But it has to assure them that they are a cherished part of the community entitled to the protection of their government, not just a bunch of oppressors who need to be cut down to size.

In other words, if all you have to offer white workers is guilt and penance for oppressive acts committed by their ancestors, don’t be surprised if they vote for Trump.

The white Southerner felt like a stranger in his own country.  The US government had been taken over by people who were hostile to his values.  His treatment of the African-American population had become a volatile political issue.  His religion, rural culture, and martial values were becoming swamped in a land that was increasingly dominated by immigrants, factories, and large northern cities.

Is this the US after 1860, or after 2008?  You decide.

One thing is certain:  battles that are ostensibly about the past are really about the present.

The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville are members of the Reactionary faction of the GOP.  As such, they are an important part of the base, not just for Trump, but the entire Republican Party.

They have an uneasy relationship with the other factions.  Christian Democrats, of course, genuinely abhor them.  PBPs find them embarrassing, but use them as lobby fodder for the things that really matter–tax cuts and deregulation.  In a similar vein, the Conservative Libertarians use them to campaign for reductions in the size of the state.

PBPs in particular have become very good at attracting Reactionary votes without looking like racists to the general public.  The difference between Trump and the average GOP politician is that he doesn’t care about the optics, and he genuinely sympathizes with the Reactionary agenda.  The Reactionaries, for their part, are clearly tired of providing votes for tax cuts for the wealthy without receiving anything in return.  Hence, the conspicuous divisions in the GOP that are largely responsible for the lack of progress on legislative issues.

There are two new GMC commercials in which the narrator expresses contempt for the notion that one might merely aspire to be a good person.  The objective, according to the narrator, is to be the boss:  to dominate your surroundings and kick butt in your enormous, menacing-looking black truck or SUV.

The vehicle is clearly a metaphor for Trump and his ethics.  Wimpy losers need not apply here.

Apple, on the other hand, is running a commercial in which The Rock tells Siri to remind him to dominate the day.  Siri, of course, agrees.  The Rock then tears open the door of his trailer.  Siri immediately sends him an e-mail telling him to dominate the day.  He assures the world he’s already on it.

The commercial is satire aimed at Trump and his ethics.  It should sell lots of iPhones to blue people.

My reactions to yesterday’s spectacle:

1. Like many right-wing talk show hosts, Trump only really sounds authentic when he’s angry.  When he tries to talk about unity and healing, it looks like an act.
2. Does anyone really doubt that he is capable of pressing the button just because he’s pissed off at someone?
3. Does Kelly still believe that he can bring order to an administration run by the Wizard of Id?
4. While there is undoubtedly an element of calculation to Trump’s embrace of the far right, yesterday made it clear that there is a genuine emotional connection, as well.  Of course, that won’t prevent him from screwing them over in the name of “winning,” as he showed during the Obamacare repeal fiasco.

If Trump thinks his public image is bad now, wait until the refugees from his administration start writing books about their experience!  The government is going to look even more comically chaotic than it appears to be today, which is saying something.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, right-of-center blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s in the Breitbart News.

The globalists are here to stay; it looks like I’m just through.

I wonder if my fans were right; I got completely screwed.

 

I tried to give a real voice to people on the right.

But Kelly and his friends prevailed and kept me out of sight.

I’m trying to regain Trump’s ear–to help him see the light.

But sometimes when I look around, it seems I’ve lost the fight.

 

I’ve got the blues.

The McMaster blues.

I don’t like where I’m going

‘Cause I think I’m going to lose.

My Breitbart friends are there with me.

I’d rather not give up.

But winning is a fleeting thing.

The state is so corrupt.

 

So now, it seems, his friends are comparing him to Thomas More.  That’s even funnier than the Cromwell analogy.

Maduro, of course, is completely clueless when it comes to fixing the problems with Venezuela’s economy.  His response to the crisis has been to amass as much power as possible for himself, which, if successful, will only mean that he has no one else to blame for his policy failures.

Fortunately for him, he has Donald Trump on his side.  Trump’s absurd comment about a military intervention in Venezuela: (a) made all of Maduro’s domestic opposition look like a bunch of imperialist stooges; (b) embarrassed all of the South American leaders who are essentially on our side in this dispute; and (c) left everyone with the (probably correct) impression that Trump sees the rest of the Western Hemisphere the same way that Putin sees Ukraine.

More work for the State Department clean-up crew!  Those guys must be really tired by now.

Trump critics were told over and over again during the campaign that we took him “literally but not seriously.”  By that, his apologists meant that his campaign rhetoric should be taken as metaphor for the grievances expressed by the members of his base, not as actual policy prescriptions.

The wall is a great example of that.  Surveys done during the campaign indicated that Trump supporters did not really believe he could force Mexico to pay for it. Promises about the wall were simply viewed as expressions of solidarity with those who felt that outsiders–Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, whatever–were ruining our country.

The irony is that it is clear now that Trump actually feels bound by the campaign promise even though his supporters won’t hold him to it.  It can’t get much more ludicrous than that.

Donald Trump is famously a member of the school of negotiators who likes to start by putting maximum demands on the table.  When you add that to his repeated insistence that all previous administrations had consistently made terrible deals, it was clear that he was going to threaten nuclear war.  I predicted it months ago, and it has now come to pass.

Even discussing the nuclear option has been taboo until now.  It creates the following problems:

1. If you put using nukes on the table and draw a red line, you are running the risk that someone will assume you are bluffing (and you probably are).  Then what? If the threat isn’t real, it can be safely ignored.  That means it has to be used to remain credible.
2. If we can put nukes on the table, so can the Russians, Chinese, Indians, and Pakistanis–and they will.  Sooner or later, someone is going to follow through with the threat, and the entire world will have to live with the results.

I’ve previously commented on the impact of the iPhone on American politics. The latest issue of The Atlantic contains an article which shows that, since the release of the iPhone, American teenagers drive less, drink less, hang out less, take fewer drugs, and, yes, have significantly less sex.  They also kill themselves at higher rates.

And so, it turns out that all those arguments about abstinence and sex education were a waste of time–you just have to buy your teenager a smartphone and watch it work its magic.  They probably learn all they need to know from the phone, anyway.

The Chinese were humiliated by the destruction of their North Korean sort-of ally, so the world held its breath and waited to see what would happen next.  It did not have to wait very long.

A few days after the end of the war, the PLA poured over the border in spite of the dangerous levels of radiation that still existed all over the country.  China essentially took over the governance of what was left of North Korea.  The US and the South Koreans, not wishing to provoke the Chinese further, and happy to be free of clean-up duty, did not object strenuously.  North Korea became a Chinese vassal state.

Violent anti-American protests broke out all over the world.  Seeking to drive a deeper wedge between the US and its erstwhile allies, the Chinese drafted a UN resolution condemning the American military action and imposing sanctions. Russia voted for it, and it had a majority, including several traditional American friends, but it was vetoed.

At home, things were very different.  The GOP, once badly divided, united behind Trump and his war.  Trump demanded emergency powers to silence the “treasonous” opposition to the war.  The outcome of those debates was not known at the time this was published, but there was serious talk of a parade and a Trump Monument.

It looks like Trump thinks he has the power to bring McConnell into the Oval Office and fire him, just as he would fire a contestant on “The Apprentice.”  Alas! Our system doesn’t exactly work that way.

It’s not easy to make a sympathetic figure out of McConnell, but that’s the way this is heading.

Donald Trump told us repeatedly during the campaign that he planned to be as unpredictable as possible.  Hey, it worked for him in business, and it works for Putin, so why not?

North Korea is why not.  Imagine that you are Kim Jong-un, and you have just heard the “fire and fury” speech.  What do you make of it?  Do you completely blow it off as an obvious bluff, and continue with your missile program?  Do you take it seriously, and start preparing in earnest for a nuclear war?  Or do you assume that Trump isn’t really in charge, and listen only to Mattis, Tillerson, and McMaster?

It’s hard to know the correct answer to that question, and a miscalculation here could result in an absolute calamity for the entire world.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.