Cromwell

If you believed the partisans from the other side, the 1800 election pitted a cabal of monarchists in thrall to Great Britain against godless revolutionaries who planned to put up a guillotine in the new capital of Washington, D.C.  After a, shall we say, lengthy and difficult process, the godless revolutionary candidate prevailed.  In spite of their fears, the Federalists acquiesced to the transfer of power, and Jefferson didn’t guillotine anyone;  in fact, somewhat to his chagrin, most of the existing governmental machinery remained in place.

The precedents set in 1800 after an overheated election have been followed ever since and are still pertinent today, even if Trump doesn’t agree.

 

Putin has been given credit on several occasions for taking Obama by surprise with his changes of course in Syria and Ukraine.  He can do this because he isn’t accountable to anyone.  When you’re the leader of a democratic state and the rest of the world has a big stake in your actions, life is very different.

Trump has made it clear that he intends to use his own unpredictability as an asset in negotiating his amazing deals when he becomes President.  That works if you’re the CEO of a series of closely-held companies, but not as President of the United States.   The rest of the world would initially go bonkers, and then look to the Chinese for stable leadership.  You can be certain that they will be happy to oblige.

 

David Brooks and Ross Douthat are sober, serious men who don’t overstate their case.  I disagree with them (especially Douthat) more often than not, but I almost always take them seriously.

Both of them wrote columns in the NYT this week in which they reminisced fondly about a conservative intellectual golden age in which the rank and file were persuaded by their good shepherds to support limited, not swaggering, government.  The wolves of white nationalism were thus kept under control.  As the story goes, the good shepherds were outcompeted by the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, and Hannity in a new media marketplace that provided lots of new outlets. It is, therefore, the duty of the shepherds to regain their dominance of the flock by providing an ideological alternative which meets the concerns of the white working class without serving up a steaming side dish of bigotry.

Parts of this story are true (most notably, the race to the bottom), but mostly, I don’t buy it.  I don’t believe that white car dealers in Mississippi spent any time reading the National Review in the 1980’s.  Reagan still has the hold on the party that he does because he connected with the voters with his swaggering.  Coded racism was always a big part of the GOP’s message;  Trump’s “accomplishment” is to lay that bare.

The bottom line is that there is a huge disconnect between the Douthats of this world and the average GOP voter.  The leadership does not appear to have a solution to the pandering/race to the bottom problem.  Maybe some intellectual titan will emerge who can earn the respect of both the tax cutters and the reactionaries, but I don’t see one on the horizon.  The bridge has been burned; it will take years to rebuild it.

The leadership of the EU

Couldn’t figure out what they should do.

They’re keeping their money.

The joke isn’t funny.

It’s damaging both me and you.

Out of all of the religious paintings I saw in Tuscany, I can only remember one that addressed Purgatory, which makes sense;  who would want to paint a picture of someone waiting endlessly in Newark Airport for a connecting flight? All of the drama is in the other two places.

The EU is in a position uncomfortably similar to Purgatory.  One of the potential solutions to the euro issue is the creation of more effective federal institutions, but that would only lead to more German-imposed austerity and bailouts, and no one, even the Germans, really wants that.  On the other hand, to move backward and ditch the euro would be an admission of failure, and the powers that be just can’t swallow that medicine.

I always thought the euro was a mistake.  Today, defending a decision that was largely intended to be symbolic of the ultimate commitment to federalism has become an end in itself, and has done untold damage to the EU.  Everyone would be better off if the EU would go backward, get rid of the euro, and focus on improving the single market, which appears to have the general support of the community;  more federalism should be pushed off into the future, when Europeans have a greater sense of themselves as one nation, and economic conditions are better.  Unfortunately, I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.

I spent the last two weeks in and around Florence (the city, not the singer), which, as my readers know, has a strong claim to be the capital of Renaissance art.  Within just a few minutes, you can walk to countless monumental buildings containing spectacular, groundbreaking art.  It was inspiring in 1450, and it still is today.

We don’t build monuments; the closest analogy is sports stadiums which typically have a useful life of less than 50 years.  We, as a society, have chosen to put our resources into objects that improve the quality of our daily lives–smartphones, flat screen TVs, and the like.   It is a comfortable, but disposable, culture.

For what, then, will the people of 500 years from now remember us?  Facebook? “Game of Thrones?”  Climate change?  Donald Trump?

Fortunately, unlike the Hotel California, US residents can check out and leave on November 8.   That’s certainly my plan.

Probably the greatest paradox inherent in our political system over the last decade or so is that while the Democrats are the party that protects elderly voters from reductions in entitlement programs, those same voters overwhelming support the GOP.

There is a truism to the effect that any condition that is unsustainable ultimately will not endure.  It applies here.  Either the Democrats will at some point turn their backs on the elderly, the Trump Generation will simply die off, or the GOP will get its chance to cut entitlements and will pay the price for it.  Since the Democrats are the party of government and the welfare state, the first possibility is the least likely.

            Trump Generation

People try to put us down

Just because our hearing’s gone.

Change just keeps us full of fear.

Thank God Donald Trump is here.

 

We’re the Trump Generation.

Trump Generation, baby.

 

Why don’t you blacks fade away.

And don’t try to dig what we all say.

We’re just working hard to take back our nation.

‘Cause we’re the Trump Generation.

 

Trump Generation.

We’re the Trump Generation, baby.

 

Parody of “My Generation” by Pete Townshend.

All right-thinking people know by now that Donald Trump is an ill-tempered, arrogant, narcissistic ignoramus who shouldn’t be allowed in the White House even if he buys a ticket.  The question for today, however, is how does he see himself?

Consider that a man who has never served in public office, in the military, or in the police thinks that he can solve the nation’s problems without the assistance of experts.  To be specific, he believes that:

1. He can put an end to violent crime all over this country, all by himself;
2. He can build a wall, and force Mexico to pay for it;
3. He can deport 11 million illegal immigrants;
4. He can out-negotiate all of our foreign competitors; and
5. He can bring back rates of growth that haven’t been seen in at least fifty years.

Only a superhero could accomplish all of these things.  I have no doubt that he sees himself in that vein.  As to what to call him, Captain America is already taken;  for obvious reasons, call him Whiteman.

There once was a Donald named Trump.

His campaign belonged in a dump.

While he said to the right

“I won’t give up the fight!”

The establishment treats him like mumps.

 

Surfing the Right-Wing Air Waves

For all you devotees of Fox

I’d rather take advice from jocks.

Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity:

All titans of inanity.

Take the case of Bill O’Reilly.

Palin should have been so wily.

Blame it all on Roger Ailes.

In the end, the truth won’t fail.

 

I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, so posting will be intermittent at best.

One of Trump’s favorite lines of argument during Sunday’s debate was to attack Clinton for being in power for 30 years, but not doing anything to end crime, revitalize our inner cities, etc.  The implicit contrast was with himself, the man of action, who can build tall buildings at a single bound.

Of course, our system is replete with checks and balances, so a single senator, to say nothing of the First Lady, can’t accomplish much by herself.  In order to meet the standard Trump set for her, she would have to wear a cape instead of a pantsuit.

Trump clearly believes that he can run the federal government with the same sense of dynamism that he employs in his businesses.  He can’t, so the question is, what then?  How does a would-be strong man behave when he is ensnared by law and the separation of powers?  Does he acknowledge defeat and the need for compromise, or does he simply ignore the law and dare anyone to stop him?

Anyone who has watched the man for the last 15 months knows the answer to those questions.  Trump simply can’t abide the thought of being a loser.  He would rather blow up the world than deal with failure.

The GOP Speaker Paul Ryan

Sees his hopes of big changes are dyin’.

He can’t find a way

To support Trump today.

Lots of others will just keep on tryin’.

 

 

 

You can make a case for Edward Snowden, even though I’m not completely convinced by it.  I would agree with him that revealing the details of the domestic surveillance program sparked an important and necessary debate, and that the debate could not have occurred without his leaks.  My issue with him is that some of his leaks about intelligence activities with impacts overseas damaged our national security and embarrassed our government;  I can’t see anything positive about those leaks.  The bottom line is that I would be willing to listen to a whistleblower defense from him if he came home.  Of course, that isn’t up to me.

I feel no such ambivalence about Julian Assange, who, to use Clinton’s words, is his very own basket of deplorables.  He promises to afflict the powerful, but focuses his attention on the West, and not Russia or China.  He promises transparency and accountability, but runs his organization as a personal fiefdom.  His hacking activities don’t just impact governments;  he has no respect for the privacy of private individuals.  And that doesn’t even include his little legal problem in Sweden.

The bottom line with Assange is that he shares an agenda with Putin;  he hates the United States and wants to diminish its power throughout the world.  As a result, it is fair to call him Putin’s stooge.