Cromwell

As I noted about a month ago, there is a clear analogy tying the French election to ours.  Fillon, the socially conservative Thatcherite, sounds a lot like Ted Cruz, while the line connecting LePen and Trump is too obvious to merit much comment.

It has been almost universally assumed that the left will vote for Fillon in the second round.  Personally, I don’t see it.  A center-right candidate, yes, but not one with his agenda.

Trump will be casting a lengthy shadow over this election.  I’m not sure how that plays out.  If his first few months in office are perceived to be a success, I suspect that will make LePen look more viable.  If not, maybe not.   We’ll see.

In any event, if Fillon wins, France is almost certainly looking at a year full of strikes and violent demonstrations.  If LePen wins, the very existence of the EU is in danger.

Sounds great to me—not.

The newbie dictator Jong Un.

He’s killing his people for fun.

A war over tweets

Sounds at best bittersweet.

You can’t stop it once it has begun.

Kellyanne Conway was apparently quoted yesterday as saying something to the effect that we pay too much attention to what Trump says, and not enough to what’s in his heart.  I suppose that is a different way of saying that we take him literally, but not seriously.

The question that follows is obvious:  how the hell are we supposed to know what is in his heart, if it doesn’t come out of his mouth?  Is the whole country supposed to read his mind?

Personally, my approach will be to treat anything he says as a negotiating ploy, not to be taken seriously, until he signs on the dotted line.

 

My wife and I spent Christmas in Cologne.  My overall reaction to the city was to wish that I could have seen it before World War II.  It has the most impressive collection of Romanesque churches I’ve ever seen, and there are some neighborhoods, typically around the churches, that are very nice, but large parts of the city are characterized by featureless buildings speedily constructed with mediocre materials after the war.  If you’ve ever seen photos of the war damage, it’s easy to understand the immediate need to rebuild, but still . . .

The cathedral, to me, is just too large and overbearing.  It was finished during the late 19th Century, which figures;  it is a perfect example of imperial architectural bombast.

The day after Christmas, we decided to visit Liege, just across the border in Belgium.  The (grossly overpriced) train trip took about an hour.  There was no sign whatsoever of the national frontier.  The city was a complete change of pace; the language, of course, was French, but so was the culture.  While the Christmas markets closed on Christmas Eve in Germany, this one was open;  the architecture was more attractive; and the food looked better, too.

When we returned, I couldn’t help being impressed that one could have such a different experience just an hour’s distance away.  The trip would have been longer, and more cumbersome, without the EU.  There is a danger that the citizens of the EU will take this sort of freedom of movement for granted.  Let’s hope they don’t.

 

When I think of historical analogies to Angela Merkel, the first name I come up with is Robert Walpole:  two savvy political operators with the ability to find the country’s ideological sweet spot, but lacking the vision and force to prevail in a crisis.  Of course, Walpole’s job was easier, because he only had the UK to worry about;  Merkel has to run both Germany and the EU, and the jobs often lead her in different directions.

With the German election approaching, Merkel has a quandary:  she can’t support any more bailouts without alienating her electorate, but she can’t afford to let the EU split apart, either.  As a result, I suspect the EU will drift over the next several months;  there will be no attempts to impose Teutonic standards of financial rectitude on Italy or France for fear of creating a backlash, but there will be no stimulus packages, either.  The individual components of the EU will thus enjoy more freedom to act independently, which, in light of the circumstances, is probably a good thing.

The greatest actress of our generation clearly thinks she has earned the right to speak her mind in public.   In her case, I agree, but I would encourage lesser mortals to let their work do the talking, because  blunt political speeches at awards ceremonies are only going to make red America change the channel.

Oh, and won’t the Kennedy Center Honors program be fun for the next four years?

The woman named Marine LePen.

She’ll claim to make France great again.

She’d ditch the EU.

What else could she do?

Then the Germans would have one less friend.

 

A programming note:  this week’s primary topic will be Europe in 2017.  That will be followed by a week with twin themes:  Obama’s legacy and “Countdown to Catastrophe,” which will be about, well, you can figure it out.  Apres ca, le deluge.

Having actually read “Hillbilly Elegy,” I can assure you that it is not the case for Donald Trump.  While the author does comment on the decline of manufacturing jobs and the cultural gulf between hillbillies and wealthy, cosmopolitan Ivy Leaguers, he doesn’t call for protectionism or a return to some sort of hillbilly golden age.  In fact, he is as critical of his own people as he is of the elites, and he explicitly denies that he knows of any sweeping governmental solutions to the problems he identifies throughout the book.

While the roots of the book are in Kentucky, most of the action takes place in declining manufacturing towns in southern Ohio.  For me, that matters, because there is a much stronger case for federal regional aid to areas with declining resource-based economies than there is for assistance to the Rust Belt.  A coal miner inevitably has specialized skills;  if there is no market for his product, you can’t reasonably expect him to be a skilled factory worker, let alone a code writer.  A blue-collar worker in a dead manufacturing plant, on the other hand, has skills which translate better to other kinds of employment.

What do we, as a society, owe to people who have lost their jobs to technological change or foreign competition?  In my opinion, the answer is the following:

1. All Americans (not just hillbillies) are entitled to a limited basic income and to decent health care;
2.  Higher levels of funding for more effective vocational retraining programs; and
3. Either a beefed-up EITC or wage insurance for a limited time period in order to address the likely transition to a lower-paying job.

Protectionism isn’t the answer.  Leaving all of the other arguments about efficiency and government intervention aside, it makes no sense for us to try to maintain a low value-added, 20th Century economy in a dynamic 21st Century world.  Nostalgia won’t make America great.

Anyone who has studied Stuart history is familiar with the concept of the court and the country:  the juxtaposition of the allegedly effete, proto-Catholic court of Charles I with the solid, rock-ribbed Protestant squirearchy.  The Paris Commune was crushed by conservative politicians and soldiers from rural areas.  Brexit lost in London, but prevailed outside of the capital.  The current Polish government is completely beholden to its reactionary rural supporters.  And so on.

In other words, the electoral map in this country, which basically consists of islands of intense blue surrounded by oceans of rural red, is a common and natural phenomenon.  Here’s what is unusual about it:

1. The GOP in many respects is an alliance of 19th Century liberalism and largely rural reactionaries.  You don’t really see that in European countries;  the two groups are in separate parties.  In other words, Marine LePen is not a Republican.
2.  Our federal system effectively gives a disproportionate amount of influence to rural areas.   The system is consequently “rigged” in favor of red candidates on a nationwide basis.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, war in Ukraine blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s all over the news.

I tried to make their government a deal it can’t refuse.

So far, it hasn’t worked, and all I’ve got’s this lousy truce.

 

Obama’s crowd is dead to me; I won’t try to pretend.

Things just might be better there;  Trump claims to be my friend.

You know his skin is really thin;  he’s easy to offend.

It’s hard to tell just where this goes and how the story ends.

 

I’ve got the blues.

The low oil price blues.

Denied I did the hacking

For which I’ve been accused.

The times are getting dangerous

As far as I can see.

Sometimes I think I’m winning

But nobody likes me.

Vladimir Putin could undoubtedly annex the portions of Ukraine that are under the military control of his local allies if he chose to do so.  Thus far he hasn’t, for the following reasons:

1.  It would antagonize the West, and could lead to additional sanctions;
2.  He would become politically and financially responsible for the government of the area, which would be unnecessarily risky and expensive; and
3.  His ultimate objective is to make all of Ukraine, not just the eastern portion of it, a Russian vassal state.  Annexing the east would leave a rump Ukrainian state with fewer pro-Russian voters to influence the government; it would also make it more difficult to swap an effective return of east Ukraine to government control for Russian predominance in foreign and economic matters.

Similarly, the Israeli government, in an ideal world (at least in their eyes), would like to annex the West Bank, but has not done so, because:

1. The rest of the world will explode in anger;
2. The Palestinians would undoubtedly fight back; and
3. Annexation would require the government to address the issue of a large, and growing, Palestinian population within a Jewish state.  It has been observed many times that Israel, with the West Bank, can be Jewish or democratic, but not both.  The logic of the situation would result in the creation of a Palestinian “homeland” similar to those created by the white South African government in the 20th Century or ethnic cleansing.  Better to avoid that issue by pretending that the current condition is temporary.

The question for the day is whether the election of Trump changes these calculations at all.  In Putin’s case, he is likely to have a freer hand to deal with Ukraine, but annexation would not help him accomplish his objective, so the answer is almost certainly no.  In the case of the West Bank, you can already see evidence that the Israeli far right is becoming emboldened.  Annexation, with all of its consequences, is by no means out of the question in the foreseeable future.

 

The media star known as Kelly.

She’s well paid to be on the telly.

She’s going to leave Fox

But she’s taking some knocks.

To the right, the move seems kind of smelly.

There were headlines on the web yesterday to the effect that the GOP wants to change welfare to prohibit recipients from buying junk food.  This, of course, on the heels of mandatory drug tests for public assistance.  Businesses getting tax breaks are not subject to this kind of hassle.

The next time you hear a Republican go on and on about how he supports “freedom,” just remember that he means “freedom” for his kind of people–not for the other kind.

There are times when it appears that we are reliving the 1930’s; nationalism, some of it thuggish, is on the march.  You could attribute it to bad economic conditions and the failures of liberal government, but the fact is that things aren’t even close to being as bad as they were in the 1930’s, unless you live in Greece.   Growth in the US, which elected Trump, the Philippines, which elected Duterte, and the UK, which supported Brexit, is actually fairly robust.  The logical question, then, is what is going on here?

I may be old-fashioned, but I can’t help thinking that the current impatience with democratic norms is being driven by two factors:  technology that provides us with instant self-gratification; and a universal comic book culture which leads us to believe that superheroes are there to save us if we can only identify them.  As a result, Trump actually ran his campaign as a Bruce Wayne/Batman kind of figure, and there is plenty of reason to believe that Duterte actually is a vigilante.

This isn’t going to change until the new “superheroes” discredit themselves, and the supporters of liberal democracy work harder to make their case.

Imagine a scenario in which all American consumers, individuals and corporations alike, agreed not to buy any Chinese products for a year.  Since this action was not ratified or mandated by the government in any way, the Chinese did not retaliate against our exports, so we are now running a large trade surplus with China.

What would be the result?  Prices would soar.  Goods for which there is no alternative supplier outside of China would be completely unavailable.  Supply chains would be disrupted.  There would be no new iPhones.  The Fed would raise interest rates to keep prices under control.  The dollar would go up, damaging our ability to export to the rest of the world.  Real estate prices would decline.  We would have a complete nightmare on our hands.

In Trump’s eyes, this scenario constitutes “winning at trade.”