Pres. Biden, son Hunter, and an inset photo of the Biden clan
Far removed from Plato’s dream of the “philosopher king”, and his notion of politics as an avocation for the wise and godly, is the harsher reality of self-dealing in politics. Biden finally did it: he pardoned his son. Are you surprised? If so, stay off the cable buying channels. Someone else should handle your finances.
Honestly, I expected Biden to do it, or arrange some deal with the incoming Trump. Did you really expect the son to spend a dime in penalties and serve a day in jail? The charade of high-mindedness from Biden and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was for the sycophants and the “unwashed masses”, which is how the party of the masses actually views their masses. My guess is that most of us aren’t shocked.
We’ve grown used to the truth of our politics: it’s long been a lucrative (as in “lucre”) career path, especially for long-in-the-tooth politicos like the Biden clan. FDR had a well-heeled aristocratic lineage, and thus his quasi-socialism was an act of condescending patronage for the plebes. But for LBJ, politics was his ticket out of the poverty of his Texas hill-country hardscrabble life. He sold himself by using other people’s money to purchase other people’s loyalty. Imagine it, using other people’s money to reward still other people, and all of it for fun and profit. Adjusted for inflation, upon his death, he was worth $100 million, quite a haul for a coarse back-slapping politician from Texas’s version of Appalachia at the time.
The “LBJ technique” of haranguing a person to get his way.
Self-interest and greed are alive and well, particularly among people whose public platform has long been a bellicose attack on self-interest and greed. Nancy Pelosi provides another case in point. A scion of Baltimore’s D’Alesandro political dynasty, her elevated social caste helped bring her into marital union with Paul Pelosi of the moneyed class. Elite colleges, prep schools, etc., you get the picture. It’s a form of social incest. Power and money have always had a potent attraction. You don’t need feudalism or capitalism to make it happen. Quasi-socialism, as well as the unadorned kind, works too.
So, Nancy can regale us with the glories of a totalitarian lockdown by pointing to her $15,000 fridge filled with exotic, expensive, chic ice cream. No run-of-the-mill Dreyer’s for this gal. She gets her hair professionally coiffed while everyone else is shut in dealing with their zoomed children. Like the nomenklatura of the Soviet Union, the old aristocracy was swept aside to make room for the Party aristocracy. La noblesse oblige thrives under new labels. The flotsam always floats to the top no matter the political scheme.
Nancy’s refrigerator and ice cream during the lockdowns.
These paragons of equity- and equality-mongering, of concern for the poor and “oppressed”, end up rolling in the dough. So much so that they can no longer ravage Republicans as the party of robber barons. For at least the last few election cycles, the Democrats have nationally outspent the GOP by around 100%, or more. The Harris campaign had raised $2.15 billion when you add Biden’s billion in the early part of the campaign season, and still ran a $20 million debt. Trump’s paltry $338 million, about half of it from donations $200 or less, seems like an embarrassment in comparison.
The party of government is also the party of the hyper-wealthy. Their complaints about “money in politics” and their serial attacks on Citizens United were dropped from the Party’s talking points. It couldn’t be sustained when the Brahmins of wealth lined up behind them. So, the ritual excuses for the loss shifted to “misinformation” and “disinformation”. In other words, they want to censor views and information that they don’t like. It’s scandalous, but it’ll still has currency in Big Media. They demand censorship and an ongoing alliance with Big Money and Big Media. Why don’t they just come out and say it? They want Orwell’s Ministry of Truth [propaganda] and Ministry of Love [persecution] (from Orwell’s “1984”).
They don’t realize that many of their beliefs are revolting to a large swath of the public. There’s too much out there to turn your stomach. Transgenderism – the idea that you can feel and think your way into another sex – is to be assisted by taxpayer dollars and forced into anything designated “woman/girl”. The Leviathan is the strong arm for gender confusion and porn to adolescents.
They wrecked the economy, which everybody has experienced at the gas pump, utility bill, and supermarket. As for crime, they only seek ways to facilitate it, not combat it. People look around themselves and see disorder, filth, and violence. Who wants to raise their kids in that?
The fact is, they suffer the disadvantage of their own minds. Fewer want what they’re selling. It doesn’t take a genius to roll out the videotape. And they gaslight us by calling it “disinformation” and “misinformation”. They demand that campaigns keep it airy, abstract, filled with generalities. “Joy”, joy about what? Trump is Hitler, and it’s the end of “our democracy”. When you confront them with their own statements and actions, they demand a Ministry of Truth. Who’s the real danger to democracy?
Here’s the truth: big government breeds big money in politics which breeds more big government. More big government breeds more lucrative avenues for the unproductive, people who produce nothing but the myriads of ways to take money and opportunity from one group and give it to their voting blocks. Now that’s the real scandal.
In all of this self-dealing, is there any wonder that they save their own from the hoosegow? That’s a minor matter compared to what they have in store for the rest of us.
RogerG
Sources:
1. Charles C.W. Cooke’s piece in National Review provides some insight into the scam that is our politics: “The Misinformation Racket”, 11/21/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/01/the-misinformation-racket/
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough called “the scope and scale” of Trump’s victory “sweeping.”
In the 1992 political war room of Bill Clinton, James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid!” It became a cliché. To a certain extent, it’s a key factor this year. But more lies underneath the public’s fixation with the economy. A troubled economy can be the product of the wrong sort of beliefs. Furthermore, a constellation of beliefs underlies a whole range of issues as a person addresses their ballot. At this point, it’s gone way beyond the economy. It’s the beliefs, stupid!
While blaming the other side for economic problems can catapult a party to victory, as it did for Clinton in 1992, it can also hide disturbing party ideas that’ll only appear once in office. It didn’t take long for Bill Clinton to uncloak the Democrats’ fetish for government control of almost everything – in this case, healthcare, 17% of the economy. Remember Hillary Care? People didn’t vote for this in 1992. It brought to an end the nearly 40-year Democrat reign of the House in 1995. Welcome to Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Forward to 2024, in the attempted postmortem of Democrat losses, donkey party enthusiasts can’t come to grips with the reality that this radical Left version of the party isn’t popular. For instance, transgenderism swiftly took corporeal form under their tutelage and began wrecking girls’ sports, their bathrooms and locker rooms, and in tandem with the propagation of gender ideology in the schools, adolescents were exposed to porn and gender “transition”. Gender confusion for children and Hustler-grade picture books aren’t winners. Duh!
What were they thinking? The Democrats chided Republicans for bringing it up as if the issue was concocted out of thin air by the GOP and Democrats have nothing to do with it. Really? Rachel Levine (born Richard) as Asst. Health Secretary, Biden’s “God bless you” to Dylan Mulvaney after his endorsement decimated Bud Light, a transgender celebration at the White House, and the manipulation of Title IX to sanction XY “girls” in every place with a Girl/Woman identifier are but a few eyebrow-raisers while parents watched their daughters losing to girls of the XY variety in women’s sports. A hard volleyball smash to the face by an XY “girl” changed a real girl’s life forever. Women’s track and swimming were distorted beyond recognition. Women’s Olympic boxing was nearly turned into a murder scene.
Transwoman Rose Montoya, who bared her/his breast implants at the June 2023 White House pride event.
The muddle of broad American sentiment on transgenderism began to crystalize into general opposition, particularly when asked about specifics. The view hardened as we approached the November 5 election. In 2024, after discussion intensified and baleful stories of the ill-effects of transgenderism accumulated, support for the reality of sex at birth increased to sizeable majorities (65%) (see #1). In 2023, almost 70% of respondents to a Gallup poll viewed biological sex to be the determinant of athletic participation (see #2). YouGov in February 2024 chronicled large majorities opposing the “transition” (“gender affirming care”: psyche control, chemical and surgical interventions) of their children by authorities.
Not only were their daughters threatened by the donkey party but government was herding them into cars that they didn’t want and delivering bankrupting energy costs all around. It seemed that the worst of California had come to their neighborhood, their garage, their schools, the intimate spaces of their homes, in many more ways than the price of eggs. The border was erased and the illegal immigrants were rewarded with plane and bus rides to the interior. Towns and cities and schools and housing and streets were flooded with foreign nationals who simply walked across without our approval (violating our laws). Crime spiked. Who voted for this in 2020?
But somehow, much of the after-election analysis skips all of this and wonders into incoherence. Typical of the foolishness was AP’s Matthew Brown in his “An influx of outsiders and money turns Montana Republican, culminating in a Senate triumph” of 11/22/024 (see #4). He essentially blames newcomers and outside money for Montana Democrat Sen. John Tester’s loss and the state turning red. In fact, as of October of 2024, the Tester campaign had outspent Sheehy $69.6 million to $19.7 million. Groups external to the candidates’ campaigns, all of it outside money, broke roughly even between the two. Adding it up, Tester had the money advantage (see #5).
Supporters cheer at election night watch party for Republican Tim SheehySheehy delivers his victory speech
It showed. Sitting on my perch in northwest Montana, I watched 4-5 Tester ads for every Sheehy one, whether streaming or broadcast.
And what of those “newcomers”? “Newcomers” don’t automatically turn a state red. “Newcomers” attracted to Santa Fe/Taos ambience and the “Rocky Mountain High” turned New Mexico and Colorado reliably blue. It’s also quite possible that the migrations of the 1990’s and the early 2,000’s (to NM and Colorado for example) are politically and philosophically different from those of the last decade and a half. The bulk of recent relocators could be classified as “refugees” fleeing the shift to the radical Left on the west coast, myself included, to outposts in Idaho and Montana. Once again, it comes down to beliefs.
The west coast shifted hard Left after the end of the Cold War. The state of Governor Ronald Reagan began to resemble today’s Venezuela more than the Beach Boys. The counterculture rose to prominence as the governing philosophy. The phenomena spread to Oregon and Washington State.
What was true of the west coast simultaneously occurred in metropolitan areas and college campuses across the country. Our cities became hotbeds of grime and violence. Blue states became infatuated with climate-change ideology and its attendant central planning. Taxes, regulation, and misgovernance spread like wildfire, including the literal wildfires.
Colleges morphed into satraps of the Frankfurt School. What’s that? Marxist academics in the 1920s and 1930s coalesced in Frankfurt, Germany, and formed a “School”, a Marxist think tank hewing to the reformulated Marxism of the Italian Antonio Gramsci. It came to the U.S. as its advocates fled Hitler and took positions in America’s elite colleges such as the University of California, Harvard, NYU, etc. Thus, “woke”/critical theory/CRT/DEI arose as a rigid orthodoxy throughout academia. It’s everywhere, unquestioned, inescapable. It passed down the social digestive tract from faculty to student to K-12 to the commanding heights of the culture. You can’t watch an ad, or most anything from Disney, without exposure to it. The c-suite is consumed by it which explains why, for instance, Wells Fargo ads are filled with their various ways to reinflate the housing bubble of 2007-8, and Big Sports’ infatuation with the oppressor/oppressed schtick.
This Leftist groupthink is manifest in urban nodes where we also find the training schools – the colleges – and corporate headquarters. When put into practice, the orthodoxy drives people away. The consequences overwhelm any initial surface appeal. Local economies are warped as sensitive groups like the middle class, the skilled trades, and manufacturing flee to more hospitable states.
Media people such as the AP’s Matthew Brown, infected as they are with the orthodoxy, don’t get it. The dynamic of push/pull is as evident in politics as it is in economics. People are pushed every bit as much as pulled in a particular direction. Maybe “pushed” is more powerful this time around. Could it be that voters were more repelled by the what the Democrats have become than any great affection for Trump? In other words, has the Democratic Party become repugnant?
If so, well, we’re back to, “It’s the beliefs, stupid!”
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election: 5. Gender identity, sexual orientation and the 2024 election”, Pew Research Center, 6/6/2024, at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/06/gender-identity-sexual-orientation-and-the-2024-election/
2. “More Say Birth Gender Should Dictate Sports Participation”, Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup, 6/12/2023, at https://news.gallup.com/poll/507023/say-birth-gender-dictate-sports-participation.aspx
3. “Where Americans stand on 20 transgender policy issues”, Taylor Orth, YouGov, 2/16/2024, at https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48685-where-americans-stand-on-20-transgender-policy-issues
4. “An influx of outsiders and money turns Montana Republican, culminating in a Senate triumph”, Matthew Brown, AP, 11/22/2024, at https://apnews.com/article/montana-republicans-wealth-democrats-8a1fdd90ef328701127d8a21ebb82dd3
5. “Montana Senate race shatters spending records at $309 per registered voter”, Aubrie Spady, Fox News, 10/24/2024, at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/montana-senate-race-shatters-spending-records-309-spent-per-registered-voter?msockid=287a0b967a9564c61c991f537b2f65ee
People sit at City Hall as the Los Angeles City Council meets to consider adopting a sanctuary city ordinance in Los Angeles, Calif., November 19, 2024. (photo: Daniel Cole/Reuters)
Yes, history seldom repeats, but there are recurring similarities in events mingled with the unique contemporary twists. Post November 5, a historical pattern reemerged in the gambits used by locally empowered militants to thwart federal authorities and their delegated powers. Prior to the Civil War, it was called “nullification”, as in the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Today, “sanctuary city/state” is the favorite nomenclature for thwarting the federal exercise of federal powers. Where else but in the deepest of blue California – Los Angeles specifically – can a city council mimic the 1832 South Carolina legislature?
Clearly, Los Angeles hates Trump as South Carolina came to hate Lincoln. “Hate”, indeed, is the proper word. What else can motivate a claque of local politicos to such extremes?
On November 19, a sanctuary city ordinance passed on a 13-0 vote of the Los Angeles city council. Strangely, history is rhyming with the 1832 South Carolina legislature and their Ordinance of Nullification, only LA is targeting federal immigration law instead of a tariff. Admittedly, there are differences between “nullification” and “sanctuary city”, but let’s not forget that the intent is the same: the thwarting of the enforcement of constitutionally sanctioned federal law by state or local governments. In that sense, sanctuary from immigration law has much in common with sanctuary from a tariff law.
At a time of the uncertain delineation between state and federal powers in the Constitution, South Carolina hung its hat on the idea of the country as a compact with states having the power to prevent enforcement of federal laws that they declare unconstitutional and against their interests – i.e., nullification. The notion can be traced back through the ruminations of Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun, and the cultural elites of the antebellum South. California’s Democrats come by the idea honestly. This latest generation of Democrats running sanctuary cities and states is following in the footsteps of their slave-owning political ancestors.
Southerners had the approval of 19th-century states’ rights apologists. LA is hiding under the Supreme Court’s Printz v. US of 1997: states and localities can’t be compelled to expend their resources for federal initiatives (i.e., gun background checks). So, what is to be done when city employees are asked to expend work hours to honor a federal subpoena for the taking into custody of illegal immigrants in their jails? Or to prevent the mayor from announcing an ICE sweep before the onset of it – an obstruction of justice – as Oakland’s mayor Libby Schaaf did in 2018 (see #1)?
According to the radical LA city council member Hugo Soto-Martinez on his link at the city’s website back in 2023, city employees would be empowered to obstruct federal immigration authorities “unless it’s legally required” to do otherwise (see #2). I assume that means some kind of judge-approved warrant. The feds will have to have their ducks fully aligned before they will be allowed to enforce federal immigration law in Los Angeles. If a suspect turns violent, it’s a grey area as to whether the city employee is forced to remain a spectator.
These latest firebrands have to be very careful that they aren’t setting the stage for another Gettysburg. The upshot of the first go-around in upsetting the Constitution (1861-5) was that nullification and secession are losers. The 1865 mad dash by federal authorities to bring into custody Jefferson Davis could be repeated this time with Hugo Soto-Martinez’s name on the arrest warrant.
Not Hugo Soto-Martinez, but you get the picture.
If the State of California, proudly grasping South Carolina’s brass ring from 1832, interferes in like manner – for they have their own nullification-lite ordinance in SB 54 (see #3) – it too might be forced to choose between their political obsessions and The Constitution. They too, like LA, must tiptoe between noncooperation and obstruction. And, really, is there a practical difference?
Clearly, nullification and sanctuary city have the same purpose which is to thwart the enforcement of federal law. Under Trump, or any sensible chief executive, local caterwauling about the “safety of our residents” can’t work as an excuse for the nation’s people to be obstructed in the enforcement of their laws. This isn’t merely a conflict of jurisdictions. It’s settled: federal immigration powers are exclusively the province of the federal government, period. No state or locality can pick and choose which ones, especially if delegated by The Constitution to the federal government, will be enforced in their jurisdictions.
If certain states and localities are deluded otherwise, there might be more than a few perp walks to a federal detention facility and federal district court. Wouldn’t it be rich to see a manacled Mayor Karen Bass, or the 13 members of the city council, or Gov. Gavin Newsom, or AG Rob Bonta, or the Democrat supermajority in the state legislature in ICE vans on their way to the nearest federal detention facility? Next time, LA and California voters, show signs of a better understanding of your place in our federal system of government. South Carolina and the ten other states of the old Confederacy learned that lesson the hard way. Are you next? You might be in for another “Lost Cause”.
Welcome to the LA Nullification Crisis of 2024.
Here’s looking at you LA city council
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Oakland’s Mayor Warned Her City Of An ICE Raid. She Doesn’t Regret It.”, Hamed Aleazaz, BuzzFeed News, 12/26/2018, at https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hamedaleaziz/oaklands-mayor-warned-her-community-about-an-ice-raid-she
2. “What does it mean to be a ‘Sanctuary City’?”, Hugo Soto-Martinez, 3/11/2023, on the City of Los Angeles website, link to Hugo Soto-Martinez, at https://cd13.lacity.gov/news/what-does-it-mean-be-sanctuary-city
3. “California Sanctuary Law Divides State In Fierce Immigration Debate”, Samantha Rafelson et al, NPR, 10/17/2018, at https://www.npr.org/2018/10/17/657951176/california-sanctuary-law-divides-state-in-fierce-immigration-debate#:~:text=SB%2054%2C%20called%20the%20California%20Values%20Act%2C%20essentially,law%20and%20other%20cities%20actively%20defying%20the%20state.
Case in point: Penn law professor Claire Finkelstein. In an opinion piece on The Hill news site, she lays out an excuse for left wing prosecutors to go after public figures who disagree with her and them (see #1). Ignoring all prior precedence and guidance, she’s four-square behind arming the justice system against her ideological opponents. Let’s face it, she’s another one of these tenured types in a silo of habitual left-wing partisans.
She opines that a Trump firing of Jack Smith is obstruction of justice. She writes,
“If the sole purpose of the removal of a federal employee is to immunize the president against investigations into his own wrongdoing, that is a misuse of presidential authority, and one that is unrelated to the protections that the presidency is meant to afford.”
Jack Smith
Borrowing a Biden word, this is “malarky”. It’s tantamount to open season for the left to target the right. I don’t think that she means for the same logic to be applied against anyone on the left – hint: Joe Biden, the entire Biden clan, Hillary and her home brew server and blatant obstructions, Stacy Abrams and the original “stop-the-steal” campaign. What about the retinue of New York and Atlanta prosecutors? Partisan use of prosecutorial powers is a form of obstruction of justice, also called “abuse of power”.
Hillary Clinton from around 2015
Finkelstein advocates a freebooting expedition into an elected official’s intentions, his motives, as they exercise their constitutional powers, something clearly deemed constitutionally off-limits by the Supreme Court in Trump v. US earlier this year. How else can she prove “wrongdoing” or “misuse of presidential authority”? Do intentions and motivations bedevil left-wingers? It’s odd that this kind of rationalization only seems to crop up when Trump, or anyone on the right for that matter, wins office.
Where were they on Clinton’s perjury, obstruction, and impeachment, or Obama’s autocratic use of his “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone”, or the sweetheart deals that paved Obama’s way from activist/provocateur to Senator to the White House? Not a peep. No investigations, thus no indictments, thus no trials, thus no “convictions”, all of it buried deep, deep. Her legal inquisitiveness begins and ends with Trump. For all practical purposes, the difference between the D’s and R’s in her analysis is who won the election. If the D’s win, move on. If it’s the R’s, all guns ablaze. Finkelstein is just another political hack with tenure, another reason to question the rectitude of the faculty lounge.
She can’t wrap her head around the fact that the policies of the Left aren’t popular, especially when they’re given the chance to roll out. Even that deep blue bastion, California, can only stomach so much of the consequences of its left-wing prejudices. They tossed out the criminal permissiveness of Prop 46 (in Prop 36). That mecca of the counterculture, San Francisco, previously jettisoned some of the school board and sent its social-justice-warrior DA packing (Chesa Boudin). This time, it’s mayor London Breed seeking new employment. Across the Bay in Oakland, its mayor, radical lefty Sheng Thao, and Alameda County DA Pamela Price were sent to the exits.
Screenshot of a smash-and-grab in San Francisco
Los Angeles finally had enough of DA George Gascon. Apparently, serial assault and battery, smash-and-grabs, stabbings, shootings, and overall mayhem on the streets aren’t popular, even among a left-wing electorate. Of course, the usual suspects in power gaslighted us behind deceptive stats, such as the FBI’s crime report which relies on reported crime. Who reports crime if nothing will be done about it? Think George Gascon. Rather, honestly, trust your lyin’ eyes and vote the rascals out. They did.
As a result, Donald Trump’s showing in 2024 improved everywhere. I’m reminded of the scene on the MSNBC set on election night when asked to show the precincts or counties where Harris bested Biden’s 2020 showing. It was a blank map and startled the hosts. It was no less true in California. Eight counties flipped to Trump this time around. But the state is the Marianas Trench deepest of blue so there’s ample electoral breathing room to keep alive the leftist vision of life.
Nearly everywhere else, it’s appalling. Freezing parents out of parenting is a losing strategy for adults still in touch with reality. Tinkering with sensitive, impressionable young minds with trans ideology and treatments behind the backs of parents are flat-out losers. Recommending, pushing the ingestion of chemicals to interfere with a child’s natural development, and eventual surgeries, which are irreversible, are proving that barbaric teenage genital mutilation is alive and well in a hypothetically civilized society. Is it still civilized? I kinda doubt it, so any campaign running on it shouldn’t expect election-night celebrations.
Thus, boys-turned-girls – er, trans-girls, “girls”, XY “girls”, whatever – invade chromosomal girls’ spaces and battle them in competitions. It’s a replay of the Christians versus the lions in the Coliseum. I’m confused – and understandably so – because boy/girl is now relegated to a state of mind and having no relationship to procreation. It’s social suicide. They’re crazy. Any parent ushering their child down this path is practicing child abuse. Don’t expect a ride to victory on the back of this buffoonery.
It’s as if the Democrats are card sharks and knowingly dealt themselves a losing hand. The wild spending and its wild debt aren’t winners. Climate-change ideology (or actually theology) as a cover for bankrupting utility bills and the shaming for the purchase of practical and affordable family transportation doesn’t help. Inflation was met with a Salem-witch-trail pogrom against “price gouging”.
A housing crisis didn’t just magically pop into existence. It’s been building for decades thanks to the Democrats’ fealty to mammoth environmental regulation and empowered NIMBYs. California is home to the worst of it. Is Elon Musk’s embrace of Trump a consequence of the regulatory crazies in the one-party state who nixed an increase in Space X launches at Vandenberg? That’s the tip of the iceberg: try to build a Levittown in the state. It’s a nightmare. And you wonder why your young adult children are living in your basement.
Do I need to mention the Biden administration’s open invitation for the Third World to move to the United States en masse? What a goat rope.
The Democrats love what ails us. Barack Obama’s beloved Rev. Jeremiah Wright once crowed that “The chickens have come home to roost.” Well, the chickens are roosting as GOP victories. No amount of legal scheming by partisans in the ivory tower will give the Democrats what they dearly desire: power. Power is gained through elections and, right now, they’re not fit to be elected – except in bicoastal, metropolitan, and academic pits of despair.
Claire Finkelstein, Trump will fire Jack Smith if he’s still around, and you have no legal standing to stop it. Jack Smith was on the ballot only as a Trump campaign issue. Trump won and you and Jack Smith lost. Next time, try making your side more palatable instead of inventing new ways to obstruct the voters’ desire to be protected from you.
As a side note, how do you spend a billion dollars, end the race with a $20 million debt, and still lose? $1.02 billion wasn’t enough to sell this turkey.
Update: Harris collected over $2 billion, and her campaign contests any contention of leftover debt.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Jack Smith must not drop the government’s charges against Donald Trump — here’s why”, Claire Finkelstein, The Hill, 11/12/2024, at https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4986125-doj-trump-indictments-jack-smith/
2. “No, Firing Jack Smith Would Not Be an Obstruction of Justice”, Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 11/16/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/no-firing-jack-smith-would-not-be-an-obstruction-of-justice/
Case in point: Charlie Kirk. Right out of the gate, all aglow with power in the aftermath of victory, Kirk, like a tom with his chest bellowed, threatened the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, with the following:
“John Thune is now Senate majority leader. If he does not support President Trump in these next 30 to 45 days to fill President Trump’s cabinet, we will remove him.” (See #1)
Who’s the “we”? It can’t be the American people. They didn’t vote for Charlie Kirk to be some sort of Tribune of the People. It can’t be a majority of the 76 million who voted for Trump. It’s pure fancy to assume that all of those voters are as enraptured by Donald Trump as he is. “The lesser of two evils” is a vote against something more than it’s a vote for. I’ll bet that’s where most of those 76 million reside. It’s a well-seasoned hunch.
A general distaste for the Democrats isn’t carte blanche for Trump to be crazy. Indeed, he can’t be any crazier than when he nominated the narcissistic, solipsistic Matt Gaetz, neo-isolationistic Tulsi Gabbard, and the magic-for-medicine RFK, Jr., to be in his cabinet. Charlie, these aren’t normal people, not normal in the sense that those 76 million would trust huge swaths of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of a young and dimwitted narcissist, a blame-America isolationist, and a kook in charge of Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest of the federal health care Leviathan. I think that I’m safe in saying that few people voted for this.
Gaetz, Trump, JFK, Jr.
And how are you, Charlie, going to accomplish this forced act of fealty? The Senate isn’t supposed to be an adjunct of the Trump campaign, or an offshoot of Trump’s fickle brain. Charlie, it’s called separation of powers. It has the constitutionally guaranteed power of “advice and consent” for offices like these. Whose advise from the Senate did he seek? Gaetz/Gabbard/JFK, Jr. were out of the blue. No one, and I mean no one, had Gaetz, or any of the others, at the top of their list for anything. If you decide to act looney, don’t be surprised that consent isn’t forthcoming.
Maybe the Senate can save Trump, and the rest of us, from himself. I suspect that Trump was understandably scarred from his first term and immediately thereafter. Some of his troubles were of his own making (Jan. 6). He doesn’t want a solid conservative, learned and experienced on the law and the Constitution, as Attorney General. He wants a toady. No more these principled conservative legal minds such as Bill Barr who couldn’t, for clear lack of evidence, follow him down his imaginary yellow brick road to the land of Stop-the-Steal. If he gets his way, the rest of us will suffer in the chaotic administration of our – not his – laws. The same would be true at DNI and HHS.
The “disruptor” schtick belongs in the play pen, not the presidency. Trump, you don’t have a mandate to do this. And, Charlie, stop plaguing us with the lickspittle hagiography. It’s grotesque.
In graphic form, the 2024 election as a vote-against referendum:
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Charlie Kirk: If John Thune Does Not Fill Trump’s Cabinet In Next 30-45 Days, ‘We Will Remove Him’”, Tyler Stone, RealClear Politics, 11/14/2024, at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/11/14/charlie_kirk_if_john_thune_does_not_fill_trumps_cabinet_in_next_30-45_days_we_will_remove_him.html
Does Trump play 4D chess? Possibly, but I have to be convinced. The subject was raised in connection with the puzzling Gaetz nomination for Attorney General. Occum’s razor might be the best path to a credible explanation for the farce. It stipulates that it’s far more likely that the simplest explanation is best when facing a quandary. The fact of the matter is that Trump may just like the guy. I don’t know. Who does?
The JFK assassination is instructive. Some people have scrounged and sifted the mountains of evidence like an archeologist at Hisarlik looking for ancient Troy. They’ve connected the millions of dots into elaborate, twisting and turning plots. It’s made a lot of people rich. For them, it can’t be something as simple as a sociopathic Marxist exploiting an opportunity to make a big splash. There’s no money in that. There’s also no doubt Oswald did it; the rest of the mongering is overheated embellishment. Ditto for 4D chess and Trump?
I’m not dismissing any other scenario. Other alternatives can also be in full accord with Occum’s razor. It’s undoubtedly true that the bulk of people in both wings of the Capitol hold Gaetz in a much-deserved low esteem. Gaetz resigned his congressional seat after the nomination, so the House ethics investigation goes away . . . but not the evidence. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that rheams of that stuff will make its way to the Senate. Sitting in the Senate hearing, Gaetz will face some compromising questions that could force upon him the risk of perjury. Voilà, the House gets rid of a two-legged clown car and Trump still gets his second, maybe real, choice.
That’s the best pro-Trump spin. On the other hand, in the meantime, Trump’s reputation takes a hit. Is it worth it to risk scarce political capital on a complicated venture that could blow up in your face? But honestly, it’s nice to know that Gaetz is out of the House and Gaetz’s nomination will be dispatched like so much junk mail. Now that’s a possible two-fer for the rest of us.
Donald Trump is often referred to as a disruptor. He is, but “disruptor” is another one of those vacuous words waiting to be filled with whatever biases a person wishes to pour into it. A lot of people are disruptors, up to and including criminals. It’s nonsense. Well, the “disruptor” Donald Trump nominated the “disruptor” Matt Gaetz to be the nation’s Attorney General. Moving beyond the adolescent titling, Gaetz as AG has got to be a joke. He’s about as fit to be AG as Baby Huey heading the National Science Foundation.
Matt Gaetz? Our next Attorney General? Next head of the National Science Foundation?
The guy is a prima donna, a narcissistic attention-getter on a continual hunt for a camera and mic. He’s a better fit to be a kid’s birthday clown, scarry and funny at the same time. He’s responsible for the chaos in the majority Republican House caucus and coup against Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R, Ca.). Gaetz and his few fellow dimwits (including Matt Rosendale, R, Mt.) were rightfully called the “Knucklehead Caucus” by Hugh Hewitt. Now, General Secretary Knucklehead is nominated to be America’s top cop. Is Trump paying too much attention to Laura Ingraham of Fox News fame? Has he lost his mind?
The guy has some skeletons, and maybe a few teenage girls, in the closet. He’s been under investigation for allegedly inducing the travel of an underage girl (age 17) across state lines for the purpose of a “relationship” (see #1). The investigation ended with no charges recommended. That doesn’t matter. If the Democrats can turn the actions of an unruly crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, into “insurrection” and “the worst threat to our Constitution since the Civil War” and entangling Trump in lawfare for the next four years, imagine what they can do with this.
Speaking of titles, “pervert” isn’t a glorious start to a nomination (Is a “pervert” a disruptor?). There’s an entire House Republican caucus that had to put up with the self-destructive antics of Gaetz and his Knucklehead Caucus. I wonder what House Republicans are whispering in the ears of Senators in the other Capitol wing. Some Republican House members called it a “a reckless pick”. One responded with “no good comment”. Max Miller of Ohio was quoted as saying, “I think he has a zero percent shot of getting through the Senate.” Key Republican Senators were left speechless or rolling their eyes. Few if any kudos rolled off their lips. If Politico can be trusted (an iffy proposition), stunned disbelief is probably the more accurate descriptor (see #2).
A roll call of important Republican Senators tells the story. Sen. John Cornyn was said to roll his eyes. Senators Tom Cotton and Shelley Moore Capito refused to comment. Sen. Susan Collins was “shocked”. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that “it’s [not] a serious nomination for the attorney general.” Sen. Thom Tillis: “I think he’s [Gaetz] probably got his work cut out for him to get a good, strong vote.” Sen Ron Johnson was more guarded: “We’ll go through the process. Can’t make any predictions.”
If Ron Johnson won’t, neither will I. The Gaetz nomination, though, is proof that a “disruptor” can also be a “fool”. Maybe Trump’s head has been turned by too much worship in the usual right-leaning outlets. For all you classicists, the weakness in the human character is distilled in Hubris-Atis-Nemesis-Tisis. In short, arrogance leads to self-destruction. For Trump, success can breed failure. Trump, be careful. Withdraw the nomination.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Matt Gaetz Accuses Former DOJ Official of Extorting Him with Underage Sex Allegation”, Zachary Evans, 3/30/2021, National Review, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-investigating-matt-gaetz-over-potential-sexual-relationship-with-17-year-old-girl/
2. “‘Reckless pick’: Lawmakers express doubts that Gaetz can get confirmed as attorney general”, Anthony Adragna, Politico, 11/13/2024, at https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/13/matt-gaetz-attorney-general-confirmation-doubt-00189382
In Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap”, the character of Nigel Tufnel (guitar and vocals in the faux group) divulges their secret in being “one of England’s loudest bands”. They stenciled their amp dial scales to end at 11 and not the usual 10 – not increase the actual power output, mind you. Thus, “We go to 11.” The difference between the regular Right and the most recent edition is that the newest vintage will “go to 11”, always on the lookout for new opportunities to be loco.
The New Right is content with the batty isolationism-lite, the battle against those mysterious and formless “neocons” and the “establishment”, and a zeal for protectionist tariffs. Their political darling is Donald Trump and prominent mouthpiece in the academy is Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson has twisted his intellect into knots to turn Trumpian incoherence into coherence. The old wisecrack “Give him enough rope and he will hang himself” could be rejiggered to apply to Hanson in “Let him talk long enough and reasonableness is overtaken by bunk”.
It was on full display in the October 26 podcast of the “The Victor Davis Hanson Show”. Hanson loves the term “reestablish deterrence”. I do too. In a dangerous world, bad actors need to understand that they’ll pay a heavy price for harming you: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” But it’s strange to the point of incredulity to apply it to only two of the three theaters of Cold War II: Israel and the Middle East, yes, of course; Taiwan/CCP/South China Sea, yes, of course; but Ukraine/Putin/Russia, no. What’s with that?
For Hanson, “reestablish deterrence” somehow stops when considering Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Hanson’s logic is a ball of confusion. He blathers about the “scared soil of Mother Russia” as quicksand for Ukraine and their supporters in order to justify a replay of 1967’s Vietnam War micromanagement when then-president LBJ chose bombing targets in North Vietnam and restricted efforts to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail and clean out NVA and Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia. According to Hanson, we should not be supplying offensive weapons nor should Ukraine in any way, no matter how modified, adopt the tactics of the invader. Is there at least a hint of inconsistency here? Hypocrisy?
Weapons are weapons, whether labeled “offensive” or “defensive”. Is it “offensive” to strike Russian airbases, supply depots, missile sites, command-and-control centers, or occupy areas near Ukraine’s borders that are essential to keep Russia’s murderous juggernaut rampaging in Ukraine well-supplied? That’s defensive, Victor!
For Hanson, “reestablish deterrence” only applies against Iran or the CCP. How does Putin deserve a free pass? It’s the strangest thing. Putin’s desire to resurrect the Soviet empire is somehow different in Hanson’s mind from the mullah’s ambition to bring back the caliphate over the bodies of millions of Israelis or Xi’s craving to rebuild the Middle Kingdom of earth. Putin is decimating Ukraine as Iran would like to see done to Israel. Instead, Hanson strays off into a gripping fear of stepping onto the “sacred soil of Russia”. No word about the “scared soil of Ukraine”.
Try to make sense of it. You can’t. Emotions must account for it. Angers, resentments could be swamping the brain. Col. Vidman is Ukrainian and testified against Trump. Hanson must have been grinding his teeth. (Honestly, me too!) Zelensky visits an American factory that’s viewed favorably for Biden and Harris. The Left hates Russia for magically electing Trump; therefore, the Right automatically loves the place. Putin, manly man, versus XY “girls” and XX “boys” regaled at the White House. The faculty lounge flies Ukrainian flags at their homes while blue-collars languish in joblessness and meth. Hanson is seething.
Hanson tries to use the national debt and an open border as an excuse not to have a foreign policy, at least one that makes some sense. He’s actually saying, until all our problems are solved, to hell with Ukraine and foreign affairs. We’ve done it before regarding the continent of Europe, circa the 1930s prior to the fall of France, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust. It’s a theater of the absurd, and Hanson is begging to play a key role in the sordid drama.
Former congresswoman Liz Cheney applauds as Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., October 3, 2024. (Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)Kamala Harris arrives to speak at a campaign event with former Congresswoman Liz Cheney in Ripon, Wis., Oct. 3, 2024. (Photo: AP)
Republican primary voters in ruling majorities are infatuated with Donald Trump. I am a Republican, and am not. Neither is Liz Cheney, former congresswoman and scion of the Cheney political dynasty. She, however, in searing hatred of Trump, has endorsed his opponent, who is the exact opposite of nearly everything that Liz and the Cheney family patriarch and matriarch have been saying and doing for the past half century or more. This is more than incongruous. It takes hypocrisy to another level, to a complete shredding of one’s life story. It’s a lesson in how to incinerate your reputation.
Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney belong in the same coffee klatch as a coming together of Antifa and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (if such a thing was possible). After endorsing Harris, Liz Cheney takes understatement to the point of absurdity. While campaigning for Harris, she brazenly tries to brush off the stunning incongruity in throw-away lines “[we] may disagree on some things” and “[we] may not see eye to eye on every issue” (see #1 below). Do ya think?!
Liz Cheney, in her role as the sister of Plastic Man, stretched all the way to the other far end of the political spectrum to work for and elect a person who would undo everything that she and her father have spent a lifetime building. Kamala Harris is trying to make the Cheneys’ Wyoming, and everywhere else, into . . . San Francisco, the Bay Area cauldron that shaped and gave birth to Harris’s ambitions. As such, Liz Cheney’s choice for president is more at home in Berkeley than Wyoming.
Doubt it? Look to Harris’s record as California senator in the 115th and 116th sessions of Congress. According to Mark P. Jones of Rice University (see #2 below), “Harris is the second-most liberal Democratic senator to serve in the Senate in the 21st century”. It’s true, and more than a cliché. She loses the crown to Elizabeth Warren, and only Warren, in both sessions. Going back to the start of the 21st century, 109 Democrats served in the Senate and in terms of left-wing zealotry, Harris came in at 108th in the most-left wing sweepstakes, just ahead of comrade Warren (see #2 below).
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, left, stands alongside Vice President Kamala Harris at a dinner nearly a month after the senator failed to endorse a 2024 Biden-Harris ticket. (Photo: Callaghan O’Hare / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
To get a sense of the sheer farce, and the extreme mental contortions required, look no further than the issue of abortion. Harris has repeatedly called for the restoration of Roe v. Wade across the nation all the way to “fetal viability” (superficially set at 22 weeks) and beyond (see #3 below). Where’s Cheney? Juxtaposed to Harris’s enthusiasm for aborting babies is Cheney’s 2021 co-sponsorship of the “Life at Conception Act” which would extend 14th Amendment protections to the “preborn human person” from “the moment of fertilization” (see #1 below).
Still, in spite of the flippant demurrals, Cheney fawned all over Harris by declaring that she would “inspire our children” . . . if they survived Harris’s abortion gauntlet, and once out of the womb, the exposure to gender confusion and “transition” medical interventions. Thanks to Biden and Harris, the gender-confused XY “girls” will be allowed to rip through girls’ sports in a twisting of Title IX. Thank you, Liz Cheney.
Liz Cheney is a lesson in allowing your personal vindictiveness to sell out the country to a San Francisco/Berkeley/countercultural revolution. She’s already begun her personal “transition” to the left by adopting the donkey party’s smears against states who actually made law, heartbeat laws, to put meat on the bones of what it meant to be pro-life. Now, Liz adds her voice to the left’s lie machine in her feeble attempt to make the most incomprehensible political tag team in recent memory seem “normal” (see #5 through #8 below).
It’s a scene of political self-immolation. For the rest of us, if Liz Cheney has her way, we’ll be stuck with porn in elementary school libraries and third-grade classrooms, bankrupting energy prices, DEI run amok, CRT-style “public safety” which means no public safety, no borders, Israel facing a new Holocaust, Taiwan as a new base of operations for the Red Chinese PLA Navy, tax-and-spend to national oblivion, and the crusade against babies in sanctioned/subsidized abortion up to birth. As for your personal prospects, don’t take your kids to the park. Sounds like where Kamala is from, San Francisco.
And all of this because Liz Cheney is infuriated by the presence of Donald Trump. In her mind, we avoid Trump, but in our mind, we get a country that we won’t recognize nor want to live in. Speaking of minds, Liz Cheney has lost hers.
RogerG
Sources:
1. Thanks to Charles C.W. Cooke for his insights into this topic in “Liz Cheney’s Abortion Comments Show Why Stumping for Harris Was a Mistake”, National Review Online, 10/22/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/liz-cheneys-abortion-comments-show-why-stumping-for-harris-was-a-mistake/
2. For an analysis of Kamala Harris’s brief history as a U.S. Senator go to “Kamala Harris is extremely liberal — and the numbers prove it”, Mark P. Jones, The Hill, 8/8/2024, at https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4816859-kamala-harris-is-extremely-liberal-and-the-numbers-prove-it/
3. “Kamala Harris’ call for ‘reproductive freedom’ means restoring Roe”, Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein, Politico, 7/29/2024, at https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/29/kamala-harris-abortion-restoring-roe-00171657
4. “Biden Administration: Title IX Protections Extend to Transgender Students”, Lauren Camera, USNWR, 6/16/2021, at https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2021-06-16/biden-administration-title-ix-protections-extend-to-transgender-students
5. “Abortion Advocates Are Lying about the Tragic Deaths in Georgia”, Calum Miller, National Review, 9/24/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/abortion-advocates-are-lying-about-the-tragic-deaths-in-georgia/
6. “The Abortion Pill Killed These Women. Its Supporters Blamed Pro-Lifers”, Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 9/23/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/09/the-abortion-pill-killed-these-women-its-supporters-blamed-pro-lifers/
7. “Untreated Side Effects of Abortion Drug Killed Amber Thurman, Not Georgia’s LIFE Act”, Kayla Bartsch, National Review, 9/23/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/untreated-side-effects-of-abortion-drug-killed-amber-thurman-not-georgias-life-act/
8. “Kamala Goes on Sex Podcast to Lie about Georgia Abortion Law”, Brittany Bernstein, National Review, 10/7/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kamala-goes-on-sex-podcast-to-lie-about-georgia-abortion-law/
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (photo: Mark Lyons/Getty Images)
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, first verse:
“I saw her today at the reception
A glass of wine in her hand
I knew she would meet her connection
At her feet was a foot-loose man
No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime, you’ll find
You get what you need”
Needs and wants, there’s a difference. Mick Jagger knew it. Needs are fundamental; wants are desires, the things that we would like. In normal times, the two are mangled beyond recognition, doubly so in election season.
Both parties – one a neo-Marxist enterprise, the other a personality cult – are in a mad dash to pander to the so-called middle and working classes, non-college educated. By so doing, the two parties in this time of voting advocate a command economy for the benefit of this general mass of people who work by the clock, do contract labor, and own small businesses. Here’s a splash of cold water: command economies don’t work, no matter their alleged beneficiary. Why? They’re commanded by the government, it’s employees and politicians. Any goodies granted one group come at the expense of the others, not just the rich, and will include many in the middling ranks of the socioeconomic pyramid. It’s the philosophy of beggar-thy-neighbor. That’s all that governments can do. Any bennies for blue collars – or the middle class – will come at the expense of the gradual negation of their own jobs and the futures of their children as future growth is diminished by “fair share” demagoguery against the rich. We’ll pay in more ways than one, not just at the checkout counter. The economic math is inexorable.
Though, to be real, today, the college-educated aren’t any more cognitively advantaged than the non-college educated. Many BAs, maybe most, are just proofs of indoctrination in claptrap. Indoctrination is not education.
The claptrap may help explain the broad acceptance of economic nonsense. A belief is deeply embedded that our specie of unionization is good, that you can wall off the country from foreign competition, hike taxes on the rich, and ignore the rest of the world, and everything will be hunky-dory. That isn’t a realistic game plan. It’s merciless, incremental national suicide.
Anyway, such is the political fashion of the time. Warning: fashionable politics and economic good sense don’t mix, like drinking and driving.
Profoundly galling is the demagogic blue-collar suck-up from both parties in the form of a love affair with “coerced” unionization, for that’s what we’re talking about, coerced. Of course, “coerced” is a yucky word, so they want to leave it at simple “unionization”. But honesty demands that we realize that the NEA, AFL-CIO, SEIU, the Teamsters, the entire litany of labor monopolists, actually demand “compulsory” (coerced) membership for everyone in the workplace. These folks aren’t into “voluntary”.
Their political word play doesn’t clarify squat. More of the word play clouds the picture even more. Coerced unionization comes in something referred to as “collective bargaining”. The question is, for them and everybody else, how to make a “collective” out of an inchoate mass of workers of divergent individual interests and beliefs? Answer: set up a system of legal protocols to force everyone into the thing, that’s how. A monopoly of labor under one set of masters, that’s how. Use the power of the state to impose one man, one vote, one time, since it’s harder than hell to decertify the labor monopoly once it’s established. After the initial certification vote to create the thing, you might be able to opt out, but you’re still going to have to pay for the thing (in California, “agency fees”). And don’t underestimate the organization’s creative bookkeeping to vacuum as much as possible out of every employee’s paycheck into the union treasury.
And guess what the dues-fueled slush fund goes for? Politics and more politics. These unions realize that their very existence is dependent on the power of the state to create and enforce the protocols that create them. Their existence and power are dependent on the state. Limited government, on the other hand, by definition, leaves little opportunity to hobnob with politicians to make law to squash dissenters at the workplace. That’s the reason for the unions’ hearty distaste for our constitutional republic. By definition, a constitution limits government power to what’s written. Big Labor demands what’s not written and therefore legally impermissible, and progressivism obliges. Progressives (in today’s parlance, neo-Marxists), as the unions’ chief political benefactors, simply interpret The Constitution out of the way by calling it a “living constitution”. How convenient.
In the end, these politically privileged labor monopolies cannibalize their own industries and morph into pillars of radical cultural revolution, ready to join their lefty comrades at the parapets. Industries flee their self-destructive grip; opportunities decay for upward mobility; many of its members discover their daughters sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with XY “girls”; and their schools, streets, parks, and downtowns are dangerous pits of despair. So much for “look for the union label”. This ain’t your grandpa’s UAW.
In fact, the UAW eyes richer fields to plow in organizing tomorrow’s cultural revolutionaries in the growing cadres of college teaching assistants. Imagine it, your son or daughter might be taught or their papers graded by a Hamas-loving activist who can’t be removed due to the protective political and legal force field provided by the UAW. It’s happening in California. The UAW has jumped on board the organizing gravy train of public employment, the very thing that has rendered California irredeemably ungovernable. California’s one-party state has turned itself into a clone of the Islamic Republic of Iran or the CCP with the guardians of the revolution, like the mullahs or the Party politburo, being the cabal of labor mandarins who were empowered by the very same state government that they now dominate. For the worker bees, they mostly approve of this arrangement so long as the pipeline of bennies keeps flowing, a glaring example of stage one thinking.
“Most thinking stops at stage one.” — Thomas Sowell in Applied Economics
Thomas Sowell
Stage-one thinking? Sowell defines stage one as a myopic concern with only the immediate consequence of a proposal or action. Then a sharper mind, in response, forces the person to address, “Then what?” After a series of then-whats, the person quickly realizes that their great idea is buffoonery. But don’t expect much stage two or three among most of those without a BA, and many of those walking around with one. According to a Pew survey from 2019, those with less than a college degree are four-and-a-half times more likely to view our participation in the global economy as a bad thing (see #1 and #2 below). Blue collar support for a wide range of foreign engagements has been waning for years. But then what, after the tariffs and abandonment of Ukraine?
You see, a stage-one buzzword of the Left has entered the lexicon of the Right: industrial policy, which basically translates into raising the economic drawbridge in international trade. It parallels Lenin’s infamous “central planning”. In central planning, the government manages, or directs, the economy to mold the “better society”. Whose better society? Of course, it’s the one in the mind of those perpetual obsessives who’ve spent their adult lives in fevered hatred of the existing patterns of life. The mental pathology infects the Left, and now the virus has come to the Right.
The scheme runs four-square into Hayek’s “knowledge problem”. Their end state of bliss – America First – demands great power in the form of more government interventions to direct the lives of millions of economic actors acting both as buyers and sellers, consumers and producers, taxpayers and beneficiaries, in the whole range of possible economic activities available to each one of these participants. Such knowledge and wisdom are beyond human capacity, let alone the people manning the controls of the massive administrative state, the Fed, congressional committee staff, local planning commissions and boards of supervisors, a state’s Dept. of Fish and Game, Coastal Commissions, or the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the people who’ll enforce Trump’s tariffs. It’s a fool’s errand, but one, today, the Right seems anxious to pursue. Read J.D. Vance’s or Donald Trump’s speeches.
The people who don’t like you driving a Toyota are the same people who see no reason for NATO, an independent Ukraine, protecting Taiwan and its Taiwan Semiconductor, or preventing the oil-rich Middle East from becoming the playground of the mullahs. For stage-one thinkers, anything beyond our borders places an out-of-sight second to the extortionate goodies made possible by a cozy relationship with accommodating politicians. Don’t expect stage-one thinkers to have a grasp of the world war stage-setting in the 1938 Munich Agreement. Aggression was rewarded and soon we were embroiled in a total war of 80 million deaths, civilian and military.
Scene from the Battle for Iwo Jima, Feb.-March 1945
We could have stayed out as the first edition of America First in 1940 demanded. It took a brazen surprise attack to shock stage-one thinkers into realizing that events an ocean away can lead to Americans dying in large numbers.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” — G. Michael Hopf in his novel Those Who Remain
Though, are we the same kind of people who could tolerate the bloody storming of the beaches of Iwo Jima and D-Day’s Omaha, or show persistence in the horrid conditions of Okinawa, the Hürtgen Forest, or the Battle of the Bulge? One has to wonder. Our elections are a barometer of the public psyche. Look at the pitches, now from both sides. Our elections are looting expeditions. Republicans promise not to touch our bankrupting entitlements while delivering on all manner of goodies to the middle class and blue collars. Ditto for the donkey party, only by a factor of ten. It’s all billed as fair-share justice when in reality it’s just targeting the successful to bankroll their pet social engineering schemes. Being spoon fed from the public treasury isn’t a promising approach in preserving a hardy people.
The Democrats used to be the party of government command and control. Not any longer. The Republicans offer a similar farce.
Think about it. What’ll happen in this command economy of the Right is a replay of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (Simpson-Mazzoli) signed by Reagan. We got the amnesty but little of the other component: enforcement. Trump will get his tariffs – something the Democrats are already giddy about – but won’t get much regulatory relief, the very thing that makes us uncompetitive with the rest of the world. The blue-collar suck-up in the form of compulsory unionization also awaits. We might get some reprieve from the greenie totalitarianism, but NIMBYism remains a populist obsession. Republicans have no stomach to fight hikes in the minimum wage, nor the other humungous host of mandates that raise the cost of doing business in the U.S. The tariff wall goes up and we will wallow in our own petri dish of fiscal and regulatory incontinence.
Prices will rise, and we may not even notice it. Higher prices only become apparent if there is a point of comparison. Where’s the comparison after walling off the competition? However, we will see an economy frozen in amber, limping along, with accountability and the essential force of creative destruction limited to those smaller firms without an intimate relationship with powerful politicos. The big government of the command economy necessitates big business. Big government and big business are Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum.
Welcome to the cesspool of the blue-collar command economy and an electoral choice between detestables. That’s our choice this time around in the presidential sweepstakes: a California totalitarian with a velvet glove or a self-absorbed panderer. Oh, the panderer is “tough”, but only tough on foreigners and not to some within his own ranks who unwittingly demand undeserved and extortionate privileges. Which one of the offerings do you dislike the most?
For me, I’ll put on the hazmat suit and vote for the bombastic panderer. Somehow, a cultural revolution of porn to grade schoolers, teenage genital mutilation, XY “girls” everywhere in women’s spaces, eat the rich, carte blanche abortion inclusive of pedicide (killing of children), and greenie totalitarianism seems to be more Orwellian than the tariff buffoonery and blue-collar suck-up. There, I made my choice.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “6. Views of foreign policy”, Pew Research Center, 12/19/2019, at https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/6-views-of-foreign-policy/
2. “Majority of Americans take a dim view of increased trade with other countries”, Pew Research Center, 7/29/2024, at https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/29/majority-of-americans-take-a-dim-view-of-increased-trade-with-other-countries/
