Cromwell

Donald Trump strides confidently into a hotel room, where Putin is waiting for him. Trump gives him the obligatory crushing handshake.  Putin briefly considers throwing a judo move, but wisely decides against it.

VP:  Mr. President!  It’s so good to meet you at last!

DT:  But we’ve met before! Or maybe not.  I’ve told so many different stories, I can’t remember which one is true.

VP:  Congratulations for beating that bitch Hillary Clinton like a drum!  The victory was all yours.  Your media gave me way too much credit.

DT:  Fake news!  Fake news!

VP:  I invented fake news, you know.

DT:  No, I did.

VP:  No, I did.

DT:  No, I did.

VP:  Whatever.  Anyway, congratulations.

So how did your meeting with Merkel go?

DT:  She’s worse than Clinton.  She’s always in my ear with boring stuff about free trade and human rights.  And she’s a two at best.  At least Clinton’s a three or a four.

VP:  Life’s too short to be spending time with ugly women.  To the victors go the spoils, eh?

DT:  You got that right, bro.

VP:  If you need any help with her, I can offer you the use of my dog.  He freaks her out.

DT:  That would be funny, but I don’t like dogs, either.

VP:  I have to say, we’ve gotten off to a disappointing start.  I thought we were going to be friends.

DT:  It’s not me, it’s Congress and my cabinet.  Now that Flynn’s gone, no one except Bannon understands the game plan.

VP:  You need to assert yourself, Mr. President.  If you’re going to talk like a strong man, be one!  Show everyone you’re the boss.  That’s what I would do.

DT:  I thought it would be easy, but it’s not.  Our system is complicated.

VP:  Here’s what works for me:  have lots of pictures taken with your shirt off wrestling people and doing manual labor.  It shows everyone how tough you are.

DT:  I only play golf.  The optics wouldn’t work.

VP:  I suppose not.  So let’s talk business.  What can you do for me in Ukraine?

DT:  My new Polish friends tell me you need to stop destabilizing the situation there.

VP:  Screw the Poles–they’re just losers.  There’s a reason their country is always being occupied.  Ukraine belongs to us.

DT:  But you can’t just go around invading all of your neighbors.

VP:  Why not?  If you have to invade Mexico after their next election, I promise I won’t say a word about it.  Mexico belongs to you.  Ukraine belongs to us.

DT:  I’ll think about it.

VP:  What about Syria?  Why can’t we cooperate there?  Assad is a great guy when you get to know him.  He’s one of us.

DT:  But you’re effectively supporting Iran, and we can’t live with that.

VP:  The ayatollahs aren’t as crazy as you think.  But here’s a deal:  you can have a free hand with Iran if you’ll give me one in Ukraine.  Does that work?

DT:  That sounds like a deal.

VP:  Can you do anything about sanctions?

DT:  Can you help with North Korea?

VP:  No can do with that, bro.  We don’t have any influence there.

DT:  I understand.  Even Xi hasn’t been able to help.

VP:  Anything else?

DT:  No, but it’s been fun. Let’s go and have our pictures taken by the fake news.

The photos are taken, and Trump leaves.

You could understand this sort of thing when the neoliberal consensus prevailed, but what does it mean after Trump and Brexit?  Are these people actually, probably without knowing it, demonstrating for Donald Trump’s nationalist and protectionist agenda?  Or are they clamoring for the return of communism? Good luck with that.

Either way, it doesn’t make any sense.

The US and Canada have far more in common than a border:  both are nations of immigrants within land usurped from indigenous people with bountiful natural resources, wide open spaces, and political and religious traditions taken from the UK.  That said, they are also very different places:  the US is much larger, more religious, more individualistic, less equal, and far more violent.

So it would seem that geography is not always destiny; accidents of history are equally important in the creation of a nation.  Why are the countries so different?  Part of the answer has to be that Canada would have no reason to exist if its culture simply emulated its vastly more powerful neighbor.  Part of the answer is that Canada didn’t have a revolution and so has less small government DNA than we do.  Finally, part of it has to do with the structural differences in the two political systems themselves.  The Trump phenomenon simply can’t happen in a parliamentary system.

Islamic terrorists and the liberal fake media:  very bad!

Russia:  sort of a problem to be addressed through friendly negotiations.

Western European leaders:  wimpy losers lacking the will to fight Islam.

Polish right-wing populism:  my kind of guys as long as you take Russia out of the equation.  I’m sure that can be worked out.

By Canadian standards, Stephen Harper was impeccably right-wing;  he sympathized with social conservatives, aggressively pursued Canada’s interests in fossil fuels, and appeared to prefer hard to soft power.  For all that, his government never reached the kind of level that we are seeing in the US today: he never tried to “repeal and replace” the Canadian health care system; he never took an ax to the welfare state; and he never denied climate change, at least to my knowledge.

In short, American “conservatives” are different, even from their erstwhile allies elsewhere on the same continent.  Why?

I think there are three basic reasons:

1.  The US was created as an act of rebellion against the British state;  the Canadian nation was not.  As a result, we have more small government DNA than the Canadians do.

2.  There is no Canadian equivalent of Fox News.  Canadians do not have to deal with “alternative facts.”

3.  Right-wing religious beliefs are more of a factor in the US.  No elaboration is necessary.

The most recent edition of The Atlantic contains a lengthy and thorough article discussing our military options with North Korea.  To no one’s surprise, the author ultimately concludes that all of the proactive options are far too risky, and that deterrence is the best choice.

I doubt Trump sees it that way.  He is far too invested in “winning” by putting an end to the North Korean nuclear program.  He simply can’t tolerate looking like a loser.  So, given the alternatives of humiliation or hundreds of thousands of dead South Koreans, which do you think he’ll pick?

If I lived in South Korea, I would be really, really worried.  The best hope is that Trump will blame Obama for the mess and thus, at least in his own mind, avoid the “loser” tag.

                 O Canada

O Canada

Your air and streets are clean.

The wind may be cold,

But your people are never mean.

 

Gretzky and Sid; Orr and the rest

Your hockey’s still the best.

Trump makes us ill.

O Canada, where sanity reigns still.

 

God keep your land

A place where we can go.

O Canada, we long for Justin Trudeau.

O Canada, we long for Justin Trudeau.

 

Blogging will resume next Wednesday.

In those very limited circumstances where the terrorists are segregated from the general population, they can be eliminated by the ruthless use of physical force. Otherwise, successfully fighting terror requires patience and fortitude more than anything else.  Effective police work, cooperation with the public, and control of the ideological narrative are essential, and overreactions must be avoided. Terror will stop when it becomes clear that it won’t work.

You can’t discredit your opponents; they can only discredit themselves.  I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to put terrorists on TV and have them interrogated by people who know the subject much better than they do. Watching an Islamic terrorist make a fool of himself in public talking about his religion would do more than anything I can imagine to deter wannabes.

As I noted on Tuesday, acts of terror can accomplish political goals when they drive the government to overreact and force waverers to choose sides.  Imagine how this will play out with President Trump, who has a simple-minded belief that toughness is the solution to all political problems.

When the next big terror attack comes in this country, Trump is going to go nuts, and things will get very ugly in a hurry.  It’ll be awful.  Believe me.  Believe me.

To the very limited extent that the GOP is genuinely interested in health care reform, the rationale for it would run like this:

1. High prices for health care in the US are driven by the fact that most payments are made by insurance companies, not the consumer.
2.  Therefore, the solution to the problem is to require the consumer to have more “skin in the game;” i.e., vastly higher deductibles and co-pays.  That will deter wasteful spending and unwise lifestyle choices.
3.  However, we acknowledge that even salt-of-the-earth GOP voters can be unlucky with their health, and should be protected from financial ruin under those circumstances.
4.  Therefore, we should be moving towards a system of universal catastrophic health insurance.  That would also protect hospitals and medical providers.

The Senate bill reflects this kind of thinking.  Unlike the House bill, and like Obamacare, it ties subsidies to the ability to pay.  However, the subsidies are deliberately designed to push everyone into a high deductible plan.  These plans will leave virtually everyone with less coverage than they have today;  that is a feature, not a bug, in the legislation.

The bill also eliminates the odious individual mandate, so it will be up to each individual American to decide if the coverage is worth it to him or not.  CBO projects that most Americans will refuse to pay large sums of money for insurance that is useless to them under all but the most dire circumstances;  the remedy for that is the emergency room, and refusing to pay.  The GOP thinks catastrophic insurance has enough value that people will be flocking to purchase it even if they can’t use it on a day-to-day basis.

I think CBO is right.  Furthermore, the GOP, by drafting the bill in secret, and by campaigning against high Obamacare deductibles, has done nothing to prepare the American people for this change in policy.  Why on earth would anyone support getting skimpier coverage, and cutting taxes for the rich, without even hearing a policy argument for the proposition that too much insurance is a bad thing?

Realistically, there are only three ways to get to a universal catastrophic health care system:  a beefed-up individual mandate; a single-payer system; or the elimination of the requirement that emergency rooms provide service regardless of ability to pay.  The Senate bill features none of these.  It cannot work.

On the woman called Queen of the May.

Lots of Tories don’t want her to stay.

She was hurt by the fire.

Her condition is dire.

Can she last?  I just don’t see a way.

Tim Tebow was a great quarterback at the University of Florida.  In spite of a few improbable victories with Denver, he was a flop in the NFL.  Today, he is pursuing a quixotic second career in baseball.  He has no realistic hope of succeeding, but the quest continues, abetted by the economic self-interest of the New York Mets organization.

What sets Tebow apart from other athletes is his unabashed and clearly sincere Christian idealism.  He is essentially an icon for the religious right.  People will come from miles around to see him play, even if he isn’t any good, because they find him inspiring.

Tebow and Donald Trump have only one thing in common:  their supporters are the same people.  How can that be?

I think you should view Tebow as representing the hope, and Trump the fears, of the religious right.  Tebow is America as it was, and should be;  Trump, for all of his innumerable flaws, is the shield that protects them from the decay of a godless society.

 

The period between about 1880 and 1914 was a sort of golden age for terrorists. Technological change was reshaping the world with unprecedented speed, political systems were not keeping pace, and new and more destructive weapons were becoming more widely available;  as a result, both the US and Europe experienced a wave of bombings and high-profile assassinations.  The threat ultimately diminished, however, in the face of political reform, higher living standards, and the even greater violence of World War I.

Some Islamic terrorists clearly aspire to a heavenly reward, not one on earth., which sets them apart from 19th century anarchists.  That leads to today’s question:  will Islamic terrorism, like the terrorism characteristic of the end of the 19th century, disappear if it does not result in tangible political gains for the terrorists?

In spite of some high profile exceptions, my prediction is mostly yes.  Most IS recruits were lured to Syria by flashy videos and promises of an easy and entertaining life, not by the prospect of martyrdom.  Most prospective terrorists will be deterred by failure.  In the long run, absent serious mistakes by the affected governments, Islamic terrorism will burn itself out.

Trump had a pretty good day with SCOTUS yesterday.  He won a mostly symbolic partial victory over the travel ban;  the big news, for him, is that Gorsuch voted with Thomas and Alito to completely lift the injunction, which strongly suggests that he will be able to rely on the votes of Three Stooges on future issues involving the abuse of executive power. In addition, SCOTUS decided to hear the baker case, which is going to have significant political implications in the future.

If, as I suspect, SCOTUS ultimately rules in favor of the baker, Trump will be able to tell his Reactionary supporters that even if he tried to take away their health insurance, he saved them from the gay plague.  Will that be enough to keep them loyal?  I strongly suspect it will.

It can, but only under limited circumstances, as follows:

1.  Terrorist acts can draw the world’s attention to your cause:  If the political system in your country simply isn’t responding to your concerns, you can attract attention (and probably sympathy) by blowing up an airplane, or whatever.  It’s obviously just a first step, but you have to start somewhere.  Would the world be as focused on the plight of the Palestinians as it is without the terror attacks of the 1970’s?

2.  You can force people who are on the fence to choose your side through terrorism:  This can happen in two ways:  either the waverers are intimidated by your brutality; or the government overreacts and turns moderates into enemies.

3.  Dramatic acts of terrorism can sap the government’s will:  If, for example, Country X is trying to maintain a military presence in far-off Country Y, acts of terror may convince the public in Country X that it just isn’t worth it.

Most acts of terror don’t meet these standards and are consequently doomed to political irrelevance.  More on that in subsequent posts.