Cromwell

Viewed from the outside, Putin’s war has been a massive strategic failure. Russia has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, while taking relatively little ground; NATO has expanded along its border; it is now effectively a Chinese client state; its best and brightest have left the country; its Syrian satellite has been lost; and its economy is feeling some strain. From Putin’s perspective, however, the war has been a success, because it enabled him to dispense with any remaining liberal democratic niceties and govern directly as a fascist. That’s a big win.

With that as background, why would he agree to end the war? Expect him to deal with cease-fire proposals the way Lucy did with Charlie Brown and the football; he’ll sort of agree but insist on conditions that are clearly unacceptable to the Ukrainians with the expectation that Trump will either give in to him or that he will gain more ground while he prolongs the negotiations.

GET BACK

Zelensky did his best to stand up to the Russians

But he’s just our vassal now.

Trump said he won’t help, and neither can the Euros.

He’ll have to get by somehow.

Get back; get back;

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back; get back;

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, Zelensky!

________

Justin was a man who thought he ran a country

But it’s just another state.

Trump talked lots of trash and helped keep him in power

But it was a bit too late.

Get back; get back;

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back; get back;

Get back to where you once belonged.

Get back, Justin!

___________

Parody of “Get Back” by the Beatles.

As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head. Is the same true of our economy?

The Trump cocktail of deportations, tax cuts for the wealthy, chaotic deregulation, and constantly changing tariffs will have both immediate and long-term impacts. The immediate impacts will be a sharp drop in consumer confidence and higher inflation. The long-term problem will be a lack of investment and lost productivity.

In other words, we are creating an American equivalent of Brexit. It will have similar consequences.

For no obviously good reason, Trump ordered major air strikes on the Houthis a few days ago. Now the Israelis are ramping up their attacks in Gaza. Are these related, and what do they mean?

Bibi wants Trump to be his yard guy with the Iranians, but Trump won’t agree to fight that way; for him, perpetual low-level wars are off the table. Trump thinks he can use victories over Iranian proxies to drive the Islamic Republic to the table. It’s a relatively risk-free way of creating leverage for future negotiations.

Will it work? Probably not. My guess is that the Iranians are working furiously on a bomb even as I write this and have written off the proxies for now.

That didn’t take long. We’re less than two months into Trump’s term, and he has already moved from passive-aggression to outright defiance of court orders. It is a move that I predicted even before the election.

From a political perspective, Trump has chosen his ground wisely; who could be less popular than an alleged Venezuelan gang member? But from a legal perspective, the story is different; the judiciary prizes due process above practically anything else.

I’m not sure that this is the case that leads to the ultimate confrontation. To quote Churchill, however, it is the end of the beginning.

There is a legitimate argument in favor of prohibiting some trans females from participating in women’s sports. This issue was already being regulated by international and domestic sports organizations, however, and in the big picture, it is a minnow. Anyone who was inspired to vote for the GOP on that basis was an utter fool.

There is a marginal argument for the state to limit the ability of minors to transition in light of the coercion that was being applied to doctors by trans activists. This was also a very minor issue, however. Decisions about transitioning should be made by patients, parents, and physicians without any coercion, either by activists or the government.

That said, the most important thing to remember about trans people is that they are people. Regardless of how annoying the activists are, there is no moral basis for dehumanizing, oppressing, and discriminating against them, which is precisely what the current government is doing today.

April 1 is April Fools’ Day. Trump is set to unveil his reciprocal tariffs the following day. While he never discussed them during the campaign, they are the centerpiece of his tariff scheme and are intended to be permanent, albeit with occasional adjustments purely at his whim. What happens after that? Will Trump tell America that this tariff scheme will cause significant short-term pain? Will he give us a coherent justification for the tariffs? Will he assure businesses that the tariffs won’t be changed arbitrarily, thus providing them with the ability to make informed decisions about the future? Or will he simply blow off the impacts and demand that we trust him?

If you think he’s going to be open and honest about his plans and their impact, you’re the April fool.

Universities wrecked. The civil service dismantled. Alliances trashed. The rule of law questioned. The First Amendment attacked. It’s been less than two months, and Trump has already done untold damage to the America we knew and took for granted for decades. It will only get worse from here.

As I’ve noted many times before, the accumulation of executive power by the right presents an opportunity for the left to break free of the constraints of the McConnell Project and to make fundamental changes to the American economy. It will be very difficult just to put the genie back in the bottle–if you don’t believe me, just ask the Poles–so that may be the default position of the Democrats in 2028.

The billionaire vandal named Musk

Turned the government into a husk.

While Trump has his back

At some point, he’ll be sacked.

Will his tenure last longer than Truss?

Early in Trump’s first term, Steve Bannon told the world he was Thomas Cromwell to Trump’s Henry VIII. I was so offended by the analogy that I devoted a lengthy post to it; Bannon is no Cromwell, and while Trump shares some of Henry’s worst qualities, he has none of the best ones. In the end, Bannon was expelled from Trump’s inner circles, Trump accomplished very little in office, and the analogy went away.

Trump 2.0, as many predicted, is a completely different beast. The obvious difference between the two is the presence of Elon Musk, who brings tremendous energy and focus to the task of destroying America as we knew it. It would be fair, then, to apply the Cromwell analogy to Musk.

The EU is suddenly beset by enemies. Putin threatens it militarily and, to a lesser extent, ideologically; the Chinese want to swamp it with imports and neuter it politically; and now Trump wants to turn it into a vassal state. Where is this going, in the long run?

I don’t see the EU submitting to Trump. My best guess is that we will see two important developments: first, the EU will become intensely protectionist; and second, the Germans will build nuclear weapons and offer their use to Europe as a whole. Given the fraught historical relationship between the Germans and Russians, this will present a real danger to Putin if he pushes too hard.

The left, very understandably, is angry. It wants to do something. It doesn’t have the votes to do much, but shutting down the government is something. Therefore, it must be done.

Except that the Democrats are the party of superego and constructive government, unlike the Republicans, who are the party of nihilism and id. Just doing something may feel good in the short run, but it can make matters worse later. The extremists in the GOP prove this all the time.

Schumer got my memo. His arguments in favor of voting for the bill are the same as mine. It’s perfectly OK for most of the party to disagree, because it leads to the least bad outcome; the Democrats as a whole oppose the bill, but it passes, anyway.

There is a right way and a wrong way to oppose Trump and Musk. The right way is through the judicial system and in the court of moderate public opinion. The wrong way is to shoot yourself in the foot to give the base a temporary high.

Mike Johnson managed to wrangle enough hardline Republican votes to pass his stopgap legislation without blue team help. It is a feat that escaped him and Kevin McCarthy for two years. Why was this time different? Has Johnson learned political skills that he didn’t have before?

No. The difference is that Johnson can tell the hardliners with a straight face that Trump will impound any spending they don’t like, so the bottom-line figure in the legislation is meaningless. He couldn’t do that as long as Biden was in the White House.

Note that this trick won’t work when the negotiations over tax cuts begin. It probably won’t work with Medicaid, either.

In its initial phases in the Middle Ages, the essence of feudalism was a contract: the ownership of land in exchange for a specified amount of military assistance. Before long, this morphed into a slightly more flexible relationship: services of a variety of kinds and complete loyalty in exchange for protection. That’s how the mob works today. Not coincidently, it is at the heart of Trump’s view of foreign policy.

Ukraine, facing an enormous deficit in manpower and resources, is eager to be Trump’s vassal. But unlike, say, Canada or Mexico, Trump doesn’t want Ukraine as a vassal state; he wants an alliance with Putin, and Ukraine stands in the way. That is why he is so eager to make peace; he doesn’t want to fulfil his side of the feudal contract.

The Democrats have a dilemma on their hands. If they don’t provide enough support for the stopgap bill to pass, the government will shut down. They will be blamed for it; there is no obvious exit ramp; some employees will have to work indefinitely without pay; and the public will be denied necessary services. If they do, however, the base will be upset, and they will send a message that impoundment is acceptable. As of today, it appears that they have chosen Option #1. Is there any way out of the dilemma?

Yes–they can agree privately to divide appropriately on the issue. A few senators who won’t be vulnerable to primary challenges can vote for the stopgap package, while the vast majority votes against it. This approach would preserve the principle that the blue team opposes impoundment while providing the few necessary votes to keep the government open.

After all, shutting down the government is the CL dream. From their perspective, it’s even better than impoundment.