#^d 2019-12-22 #^h Weekend Roundup
I didn't feel like doing a Roundup this weekend, but found a piece I wanted to quote at length, and figured that might suffice: Andrew Sullivan: What we know about Trump going into 2020. I haven't been a fan of Sullivan's lately (well, ever), and don't endorse his asides on the moral superiority of conservatives, but his assessment of Trump hits a lot of key points, and is well worth reading at length (I am going to add some numbered footnotes where I have something I want to add):
So reflect for a second on the campaign of 2016. One Republican candidate channeled the actual grievances and anxieties of many Americans, while the others kept up their zombie politics and economics. One candidate was prepared to say that the Iraq War was a catastrophe, that mass immigration needed to be controlled[1], that globalized free trade was devastating communities and industries, that we needed serious investment in infrastructure, that Reaganomics was way out of date, and that half the country was stagnating and in crisis.
That was Trump. In many ways, he deserves credit for this wake-up call. And if he had built on this platform and crafted a presidential agenda that might have expanded its appeal and broadened its base, he would be basking in high popularity and be a shoo-in for reelection.[2] If, in a resilient period of growth, his first agenda item had been a major infrastructure bill and he'd combined it with tax relief for the middle and working classes, he could have crafted a new conservative coalition that might have endured.[2] If he could have conceded for a millisecond that he was a newbie and that he would make mistakes, he would have been forgiven for much. A touch of magnanimity would have worked wonders. For that matter, if Trump were to concede, even now, that his phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine went over the line and he now understands this, we would be in a different world.
The two core lessons of the past few years are therefore: (1) Trumpism has a real base of support in the country with needs that must be addressed, and (2) Donald Trump is incapable of doing it and is such an unstable, malignant, destructive narcissist that he threatens our entire system of government. The reason this impeachment feels so awful is that it requires removing a figure to whom so many are so deeply bonded because he was the first politician to hear them in decades. It feels to them like impeachment is another insult from the political elite, added to the injury of the 21st century. They take it personally, which is why their emotions have flooded their brains. And this is understandable.
But when you think of what might have been and reflect on what has happened, it is crystal clear that this impeachment is not about the Trump agenda or a more coherent version of it. It is about the character of one man: his decision to forgo any outreach, poison domestic politics, marinate it in deranged invective, betray his followers by enriching the plutocracy, destroy the dignity of the office of president, and turn his position into a means of self-enrichment. It's about the personal abuse of public office: using the presidency's powers to blackmail a foreign entity into interfering in a domestic election on his behalf, turning the Department of Justice into an instrument of personal vengeance and political defense, openly obstructing investigations into his own campaign, and treating the grave matter of impeachment as a "hoax" while barring any testimony from his own people.
Character matters. This has always been a conservative principle but one that, like so many others, has been tossed aside in the convulsions of a cult. And it is Trump's character alone that has brought us to this point. . . .
The impeachment was inevitable because this president is so profoundly and uniquely unfit for the office he holds, so contemptuous of the constitutional democracy he took an oath to defend, and so corrupt in his core character that a crisis in the conflict between him and the rule of law was simply a matter of time. When you add to this a clear psychological deformation that can produce the astonishing, deluded letter he released this week in his own defense or the manic performance at his Michigan rally Wednesday night, it is staggering that it has taken this long. The man is clinically unwell, preternaturally corrupt, and instinctively hostile to the rule of law. In any other position, in any other field of life, he would have been fired years ago and urged to seek medical attention with respect to his mental health.
Footnotes:
Sullivan also has an appreciative piece on his old chum's win in the UK elections: Boris's blundering brilliance, including this bit:
The parallels with Donald Trump are at first hard to resist: two well-off jokers with bad hair playing populist. But Trump sees himself, and is seen by his voters, as an outsider, locked out of the circles he wants to be in, the heir to a real-estate fortune with no political experience and a crude sense of humor, bristling with resentment, and with a background in reality television. He despises constitutional norms, displays no understanding of history or culture, and has a cold streak of cruelty deep in his soul. Boris is almost the opposite of this, his career a near-classic example of British Establishment insiderism with his deep learning, reverence for tradition, and a capacity to laugh at himself that is rare in most egos as big as his. In 2015, after Trump described parts of London as no-go areas because of Islamist influence, Johnson accused him of "a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president." Even as president, Trump is driven primarily by resentment. Boris, as always, is animated by entitlement. (The vibe of his pitch is almost that people like him should be in charge.)
Some scattered links this week:
Sarah Almukhtar/Rod Nordland: What did the US get for $2 trillion in Afghanistan? Nordland also wrote: The death toll for Afghan forces is secret. Here's why.
Robert P Baird: The art of the Democratic deal: "How Nancy Pelosi and her party navigated a historic week in the House of Representatives."
Zack Beauchamp: The shamelessness of Bill Barr.
Riley Beggin: Senate Republicans have already made up their minds on impeachment.
Julia Belluz/Nina Martin: The extraordinary danger of being pregnant and uninsured in Texas.
Katelyn Burns:
Jonathan Chait:
Trump's attack on Amazon may be his most egregious abuse of power yet. I seriously doubt it, but isn't it pretty strange that a major media mogul (Jeff Bezos) could even be in position to be punished by pulling a $10 billion Defense contract?
Trump writes insane letter to Pelosi showing why he's unfit for office.
Don't make impeachment partisan, warns party that impeached Clinton over sex.
Republicans are right. The impeachment investigation shouldn't end too soon.
Why Trump wants even more pollution than industry does. [08-29]
Isaac Chotiner:
Why the editor of Christianity Today decided to rebuke Trump: Interview with Mark Galli.
India's citizenship emergency: Interview with Niraja Gopal Jayal.
Jane Coaston: Christianity Today called for Trump's removal. Here's why that doesn't matter.
Jennifer Cohn: How new voting machines could hack our democracy.
Juliet Eilperin/Steven Mufson: The Trump administration just overturned a ban on old-fashioned lightbulbs.
Adam Gopnik: The field guide to tyranny: Review of Frank Dikötter: How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century, and Daniel Kalder: The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy.
Sean Illing: Why so many people who need the government hate it: Interview with Suzanne Mettler author of The Government-Citizen Disconnect. Pull quote: "If we become more and more anti-government, we're against ourselves. We're against out own collective capacity to do anything."
Sarah Jones: No, evangelicals aren't turning on Trump.
John Judis: The right and wrong lessons from Corbyn and Labour's defeat.
Roge Karma/Ezra Klein: In 2020, Joe Biden and the "moderates" are well to Obama's left. Examples group Sanders/Warren and Biden/Buttigieg and compare both to Obama in 2008. Had they picked Klobuchar for their "moderate" sample, the waters might have been a good deal muddier. (Same for Bloomberg.) Lots of reasons for the shift left, not least that even in the rare cases Obama managed to fulfill a promise, his solutions were no way near adequate to address the problems. I'm actually surprised that no one has tried to claim the "moderate lane" by conceding that Sanders is right on where we want to go but wrong on tactics, offering instead shorter steps that point us in the right direction, ones that one can build momentum on. One obvious thing is to promote schemes to expand on Medicare for more and more people. Every time Buttigieg attacks Medicare-for-All he exposes the loss of a couple points from his IQ. Before long, he'll sink below Beto O'Rourke, maybe even John Delaney. By then he'll be finished.
Tony Karon: What's Russian for 'I told you so'? How American exceptionalism suppressed the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. I have a few quibbles here, but the main point (referencing "the Afghan war's equivalent of the Pentagon Papers) is valid, and one could build even more on the similar US/USSR experiences there: both shared a list of stages, for much the same reasons:
Karon is right that Americans failed to recognized these parallels because Americans think they're different and special, even when they're doing the exact same things. Of course, they rarely even realized they were doing the same things. For one, they took credit for the Soviet failures in the 1980s, and knew that they wouldn't have to face comparable subversion by a foreign power. They knew they had more force at their disposal, and much deeper pockets -- which kept them in the war for a decade longer than the Russians, not that it's done they any good.
This is the first piece I've noticed from the Koch-funded Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Some other pieces from their website:
Andrew Bacevich: An alternative to US world dominance. Bacevich, who landed the job of President of the Quincey Institute, also wrote: Iran might be America's enemy, but Saudi Arabia is no friend.
Jessica Lee: Breaking the deadlock: Jumpstarting talks between the United States and North Korea.
Samuel Moyn/Stephen Wertheim: The infinity war.
Trita Parsi: Is Trump accidentally triggering reconciliation in the Middle East? Parsi has several earlier articles: America's confrontation with Iran goes deeper than Trump; and Could Obama's Iran playbook save Trump from war?
Paul R Pillar: Government lies aren't solely responsible for our misguided wars.
Nikhil Pal Singh: Enough toxic militarism. "This rosy narrative no longer bears the weight of the United States' staggering contribution to mass violence, regional destabilization, and ecological decay."
Stephen Walt: A manifesto for restrainers.
Adam Wunische: The real lesson from the Afghanistan Papers: Pull the US military out of the statebuilding business.
Jen Kirby: The USMCA trade deal passes the House in a rare bipartisan vote: 385-41, "after Democrats secured changes to labor and pharmaceutical provisions." For background, Kirby also wrote: USMCA, Trump's new NAFTA deal, explained in 600 words. Also: Democrats -- and Trump -- declare victory on USMCA.
Eric Levitz:
Ian Millhiser:
The Republican judges who were widely expected to kill Obamacare got cold feet: "Sometimes, people who stare into the abyss blink."
Ella Nilsen: "We're looking for undecideds": Pete Buttigieg's campaign is pitting its public option against Medicare-for-all.
Kelsey Piper: The Nobel went to economists who changed how we help the poor. But some critics oppose their big idea. Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Kremer, and randomized control trials (RCTs).
Andrew Prokop:
Aaron Rupar:
Theodore Schleifer: Pete Buttigieg is raising money from Silicon Valley's billionaires -- even as Elizabeth Warren attacks him for it.
Matt Seaton: The strange death of social-democratic England.
Jonah Shepp: Boris Johnson's 'radical' Brexit agenda.
Emily Stewart: How Mike Bloomberg made his billions: a computer system you've probably never seen.
Matt Stieb:
Trump's post-impeachment rally was his longest and strangest yet.
House Republicans liken impeachment to Pearl Harbor, say Trump treated worse than Jesus.
Trump suggests Adam Schiff be subject to Guatemalan justice for paraphrasing him.
Read President Trump's unhinged letter to Nancy Pelosi on impeachment.
UN climate talks fall apart over potential of Trump 2020 win.
Donald Trump Jr benefits from nepotism in foreign country by shooting endangered animal.
Trump expresses anti-semitic sentiments before a Jewish audience again.
Matt Taibbi:
Michael Moore on 'Useful Idiots': 'If the election were held today, Trump would win'.
Five questions still remaining after the release of the Horowitz report.
Washington Post's Afghanistan story reveals core folly of American defense strategy: "Why are we still in Afghanistan? Because our policies make failure inescapable."
Reis Thebault/Hannah Knowles: Georgia purged 309,000 voters from its rolls. It's the second state to make cuts in less than a week. The other is Wisconsin: see Marisa Iati: A judge ordered up to 234,000 people to be tossed from the registered voter list in a swing state.
Emily Todd VanDerWerff:
The 18 best TV shows of 2019: I probably watched more TV this year than any since the 1960s. Took this as a checklist. Listed shows I watched:
I watched previous seasons of (9) Mr. Robot (USA), but it got pretty disconnected from reality last time, so I haven't given it much thought this round. I watched one show each of (6) Lodge 49 (AMC) and (1) Watchmen (HBO). Commercial breaks killed the former, and I didn't see any point to the latter. No idea what I'd recommend in place of this list -- I'd have to rumage through a bunch of lists, as they're not coming readily to mind. I suppose watching 21 seasons of Silent Witness kept us away from lots of other series.
The 21 TV shows that explained the 2010s. Never even heard of the top pick here -- Nathan for You (Comedy Central) -- but more series I've watched substantial chunks of:
Watched small bits of (5) Halt and Catch Fire (AMC), (9) Atlanta (FX), (10) Bob's Burgers (Fox), Black-ish. There's also a list of "10 shows I loved that started in the 2000s and ended in the 2010s":
Alex Ward: Pentagon halts operational training for Saudi military students after Pensacola shooting.
Craig Whitlock: At war with the truth: "US officials constantly said they were making progress. They were not, and they knew it, an exclusive Post investigation found." An introduction to "The Afghanistan Papers," with links to "more than 2,000 pages of interviews and memos" -- a collection widely compared to "The Pentagon Papers" (from the Vietnam War). Whitlock also wrote Part 2: Stranded without a strategy.
Charlotte Wood: From disbelief to dread: the dismal new routine of life in Sydney's smoke haze. Related: Naaman Zhou/Josh Taylor: The big smoke: how bushfires cast a pall over the Australian summer.
Matthew Yglesias:
Amy Klobuchar deserves a closer look from electability-minded Democrats. A lot of reporters thought Klobuchar got a boost from her performance at the December debate (e.g., see Amy Klobuchar made the biggest gains with voters at the debate), but from the bits I overheard -- I was working in a neighboring room -- I found her singularly annoying, and not just because her political stance has moved so sharply to the far right end of the Democratic Party spectrum. Yglesias cites her winning margins in Minnesota compared to other Democrats (that is, more liberal ones), although in my experience lopsided statewide margins most often reflect weak opposition campaigns -- something that doesn't happen in presidential contests. The more relevant "electability" question is how does she stack up directly against Trump? If the world neatly balanced on a left-right scale, being close to the right might be an advantage. But her centrism is a mix of "see no problems, broach no solutions" -- and who really cares about that? Trump at least sees problems, even if his answers are half-hearted and ill-reasoned. For another argument on electability, see Carl Beijer: Joe Biden will lose a general election to Donald Trump: but "there is one safe bet -- it's Bernie Sanders."
To win reelection, Trump should try to deliver on his economic populist promises: But he won't, because the Republicans won't let him do anything significant on Yglesias's list (even as the Democrats give him minor victories on USMCA and drug prices). Still, every Democrat should memorize the section on "Trump's litany of broken promises" -- only problem there is that they never expected him to deliver on such promises, because they saw immediately how much of a fraud he is.