I saw a headline in the Wichita Eagle on Friday -- the article was unsigned but attributed to Las Vegas Review-Journal -- that puzzled me: "Bidenomics is just tired liberalism on steroids." So what is it they're trying to say? It's rejuvenated liberalism? Maybe they want it banned for doping? The phrase "on steroids" has largely lost its literal meaning, in favor of "much larger, stronger, or more extreme than is normal or expected." So at the very least it should cancel out "tired," leaving us with "Bidenomics is just liberalism." That may be the author's complaint, but why is that such a bad thing?
Trump waxes nostalgically about "make America great again," but the closest America ever came to something resembling conventional notions of greatness was the period during and after WWII, when liberalism was most pervasive and hegemonic. In many ways, the original MAGA movement was Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but unlike Trump, Johnson had no desire for nostalgia. His signature program meant to extend New Deal progressivism to all Americans.
Johnson isn't remembered especially well today because he blew so much political capital on the Vietnam War. One lesson we should draw is that it's always a mistake to assume military might is some kind of measure of greatness. Liberals made that mistake in WWII, partly because the enemies were so abhorrent, and partly because the war effort was led by one of their own (brilliantly, I might add). Vietnam started to divide liberals, but I'm old enough to remember when most were staunchly on board, and I've never really forgiven them for that war -- or for allowing themselves to be duped into thinking that communism was such a threat to freedom that they should kill or punish anyone tempted to think otherwise, or for becoming the unwitting victims of their own witch hunts.
Since the 1970s "liberal" has become little more than an epithet, thanks mostly to the relentless slanders of the right -- "tired" is just one of the milder ones, leaving us with this puzzle: if liberalism is so tired, how can it be such a threat?
Trump, DeSantis, and other Republicans:
Zak Cheney-Rice: [07-21] What the most diverse GOP primary ever says about the GOP. Nothing, really, except that the media's preoccupation with looks is silly and stupid. (As, I might add, was Seth Meyers' endless riffs on Robert Mueller's look.) Not that I never wondered whether the more fervent racists in the Republican Party would find it hard to vote for a black Republican, but I got my answer when Jesse Helms voted for Clarence Thomas. Republicans will continue to vote for whoever they're told to, regardless of personal prejudices. And sure, Democrats can be every bit as dazzled by this skin game. Bill Clinton famously wanted a cabinet that "looked like America," and he got his point as far as looks go. But beneath that surface, damn near everyone in his cabinet had Ivy League degrees, which put them in a very small and exclusive minority, just like Clinton.
Diana Falzone/Asawin Suebsaeng/Adam Rawnsley: [07-11] Murdochs start to sour on DeSantis: 'They can smell a loser'.
Shane Goldmacher/Maggie Haberman: [07-23] A 'leaner-meaner' DeSantis campaign faces a reboot and a reckoning: So after a review of the candidate's "challenging learning curve" this is what his consultants advised: get meaner? Adam Serwer predicted as much when he titled his anti-Trump book The Cruelty Is the Point. For another view of this, see Nicole Narea: [07-20] Ron DeSantis is really bad at running for president.
Margaret Hartmann: [07-14] Trump Super-PAC paid Melania $155,000 to choose tableware: May seem like something anyone could do, but economics teaches us that in a free market, marginal value is everything. But sure, if you aren't smart enough to understand that the market is perfect, this could just look like graft.
Jeet Heer: [07-23] Young Americans for Freedom hates freedom: Interview with Lauren Lassabe Shepherd. Note that YAF also hate most Americans. Jeer also wrote: [07-21] Why Trump 2.0 would be much worse: You already knew that, didn't you? He's made it clear that this time he's out for revenge, and he won't accept staff that will get in his way, as many did in his first term. But also, what would a Trump win say about the electorate? In 2016, it was naive and foolish to view him as an outsider who would "drain the swamp," but at least he presented himself that way. This time he's a known quantity, and there's no excuse for thinking he'll ever be anything else (except worse).
Shayna Jacobs: [07-19] DeSantis, others sued over alleged 'election police' voter intimidation.
Hugo Lowell: [07-21] Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry.
Charles P Pierce:
Nikki McCann Ramirez:
[07-19] Trump is already fundraising off of his DOJ target letter.
[07-21] Michael Cohen settles lawsuit against Trump Organization days before trial: The suit was about unpaid legal bills. How much Trump settled for is unspecified.
Jennifer Rubin: [07-23] Trump's made-for-MAGA arguments keep losing in court.
Ashlie D Stevens: [07-18] Michigan attorney general charges 16 in 2020 Trump fake elector scheme.
Tessa Stuart: [07-20] Nebraska teen sent ot jail over illegal abortion: "Celeste Burgess was arrested after Facebook turned over her private messages to police."
Kevin Sullivan/Lori Rozsa: [07-22] DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery.
Jonathan Swan/Charlie Savage/Maggie Haberman: [07-17] Trump and allies forge plans to increase presidential power in 2025: Much of this deals with the likelihood that the Republican-packed Supreme Court will allow a Republican president such license -- "the unitary executive theory" is basically a fancy term for dictatorship. Still, most ominous are the direct quotes from Trump, like his promise to "find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education," where "radicals" are pretty much anyone who believed in what used to be called "liberal education." (In typing that, I flashed on "liberal indoctrination," which is not what the phrase means, but testimony to the way conservatives see education as a process of indoctrination.)
Even more striking is this Trump quote:
We will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class who hates our country.
Aside from the red baiting, which just goes to show that Trump is always most at home with jingoism, the rest of that doesn't sound so bad. There certainly are warmongers, both deeply embedded in the state and in the revolving door businesses, foundations, and lobby shops that feed and further them. Same for globalists, although that's a fuzzier term: almost no one believes in "one world government," but lots of business interests promote global trade and finance, and they are well-represented in government, and among the donor class. As for "the sick political class that hates our country," that sounds like most Republicans. Still, I don't trust Trump to get rid of anyone who should be expelled. Rather, he seems to want a return to the spoils system, where everyone in the government works for the political interests of the president.
Michael Tomasky: [07-21] McCarthy's vow to erase Trump's impeachment sums up the GOP's sickness. "It's a cult of one man -- not a political party anymore in any remote sense of the word. Trump says jump, and they ask how high. In fact, these days Trump rarely even has to say jump. A certain situation arises, and congressional Republicans anticipate that he's about to say jump, so they start jumping, trying to guess the height that will please him most." That's just the first of three reasons Tomasky gives why the Republican Party has become: "an extremist cult that has no incentive to behave otherwise."
Mary Tuma: [07-21] Testifying against Texas, women denied abortions relive the pregnancies that almost killed them. No reason to file this elsewhere. It's not just policies that Republicans want to implement to make our lives more miserable. It's also about things they've already done.
Biden and/or the Democrats:
Kevin T Dugan: [07-14] Biden's student-loan forgiveness program just got even bigger.
Mike Konczal: [07-21] "Bidenomics" vs. "Reaganomics"
The Supreme Court:
Ian Millhiser: [07-17] How the Supreme Court put itself in charge of the executive branch: "The major questions doctrine, explained."
Walter Shapiro: [07-19] Sonia Sotamayor's book scandal is banal and troubling: "The Supreme Court justice's buckraking hardly compares to that of her conservative coleagues. But it still says a lot about how much Washington has changed." Well, it says two things: one is that no one in America thinks they're making enough money, even with a cushy lifetime job and pension; the other is that when other Justices are mired in scandals showing them to be truly corrupt, any innocuous bit of buckraking looks suspect.
Stephen Siegel: [07-21] Clarence Thomas's cherry-picked originalism on affirmative action: "Originalism" originally meant whatever Antonin Scalia wanted it to mean, because only he claimed unique, divine, infallable insight into the minds of the crafters of the Constitution. Since his death, other conservatives have stepped up as originalism's self-appointed oracles, no less dishonestly than Scalia.
Climate and Environment:
Kate Aronoff: [07-20] America's deadly heat isn't (officially) a major disaster: "Why doesn't the federal government recognize that this extreme weather is a catastrophe?" Probably because catastrophes are supposed to be rare events, and this summer's heat wave seems inevitable, something that we can expect to recur every summer for the rest of our lives. But also note that the purpose of such declarations isn't simply to acknowledge reality, but to allow the government to act to help the victims of disasters, and Republicans really don't like that (except when hurricanes hit Florida, for some reason). See Julia Rock: [07-19] New GOP bill would curb Biden's power to fight climate change. Because, well, heaven forbid that he should do things that would help people.
Umair Irfan: [07-21] It's even hot underwater.
Rebecca Leber: [07-21] The invisible consequences of heat on the body and mind: "Heat has bigger effects on us than we may realize."
Matt Stieb: [07-20] 7 eye-popping numbers from tghe worldwide heat wave.
Dan Stillman: [07-19] With record heat expected, these 5 maps show what's to come across the US.
Molly Taft: [07-14] The media has no idea how to cover extreme heat.
Tish Harrison Warren: [07-23] Rising heat deaths are not just about the temperature: "While it is important to highlight heat deaths as another example of the devastating toll of climate change, it is also important to say that, often, when people die of heat, they are actually dying of poverty."
Li Zhou:
[07-17] Why Canada's wildfires will affect air quality for weeks to come. As of Monday morning, there were 882 active wildfires in Canada, most in British Columbia (373) and Alberta (121), with 579 deemed "out of control." "Experts have warned that the rest of the season could prove as damaging as the first part."
[07-17] The "new abnormal": The rise of extreme flooding, briefly explained. Interviews with several experts.
Ukraine War: The great "counteroffensive" has been going for more than a month now, but the New York Times hasn't changed its maps page since July 9.
Blaise Malley: [07-21] Diplomacy Watch: Russia plays hardball with Black Sea grain deal: Formal withdrawal from the deal was followed by bombing of the port of Odesa.
Andrew J Bacevich: [07-17] Ukraine and the great revival of American empire: "Kyiv's fate has always been an afterthought. The real goal is reinvigorating NATO and, by extension, US primacy."
Andrew Cockburn: [07-18] The $850 billion chicken comes home to roost: "The military industrial complex is not designed to actually fight wars. If so, you wouldn't see Ukraine struggling right now to win one." Quotes Jim Burton, who wrote the 1993 memoir Pentagon Wars, as saying the US defense system is "a corrupt business -- ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom."
Daniel L Davis: [07-19] Why Ukraine's counter-offensive is failing.
Tamar Jacoby: [07-17] Ukraine's other front: The war on corruption. Ukraine's reputation for corruption goes back to its founding, creating a clique of oligarchs and mobsters, much like Russia, so this is bound to be a sensitive subject as the country is being flooded with arms and other support.
Jen Kirby: [07-19] How bad will things get now that Russia has quit its grain deal with Ukraine?
Around the world:
Syrus Jin: [07-21] US-Korea policy is 'trapped in a pattern of cyclical amnesia': "After 70 years, Washington needs to escape this Sisyphean tragedy of tough talk without any results." Also:
Gabriela Bernal: [07-20] It's time to end the forever war on the Korean Peninsula. Author previously wrote: [2022-11-03] Is anyone else concerned that 'deterrence' isn't working with North Korea? I'd go farther and say that deterrence is a fundamentally flawed concept: that it hardens disputes, and risks provoking the very wars that it's supposedly meant to prevent.
Jo-Ann Mort: Ehud Barak: There's a phrase for what Bibi wants -- "de facto dictatorship". Barak also added: "Never in our history as a state has Israel suffered such a destruction of value in such a short time." Still worth remembering how Barak walked away from deals with Syria and Arafat, paving the way for the long-term rise of the Israeli right.
Eric Alterman: [03-22] The New York Times and Israel: What is (and isn't) fit to print: "Netanyahu accuses the paper of record of anti-Israel bias. But for decades now, the opposite has been true."
Richard Silverstein: [06-26] Israel's creeping genocide: "Pogroms in 20 Palestinian villages targeted by masses of settler-thugs protected by the IDF."
Li Zhou: [07-21] Vox, the far-right party making gains in Spain, explained: I've seen a number of pieces predicting a Vox breakthrough, but they wound up in third, with 12.39% and 33 seats (down 19 from before, so not enough to form a coalition with the conservative PP (33.05%, 136 seats, vs. 31.70%, 122 seats for PSOE).
David Byler: [07-17] 5 myths about politics, busted by data: Or proven, depending on how you read the data:
I see lessons here for Democrats, in that they need to hold onto and expand their substantial share of mainstream voters, especially ones free enough of Republican prejudice as to still have options. Of course, it's also important to keep the groups Republicans offer no joy to, which means offering tangible benefits, and not just taking them for granted. (Failure there may not translate to Republican votes, but to non-voting.) But I also don't put much stock in multisectoral statistical breakdowns and their attendant identity politics
As for Republicans, they're already performing way above where they should be if voters were rational and voted their best interests. How they improve on that is hard to imagine. They're certainly not going to change course, at least as long as the current one seems to give them a chance to squeeze through on some technicality. Their only real hope is that Democrats discredit themselves -- a card they've been playing, with diminishing returns, since the check kiting scandal of 1993.
Robert Crawford: [07-20] How media makes impact of U S forever wars invisible: Review of Norman Solomon: War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of its Military Machine. An excerpt from this book is here: The convenient myth of "humane" wars. There's also an interview with Solomon: [06-23] How America's wars become 'invisible'.
Tyler Austin Harper: [07-19] 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' tell the same terrifying story: Author ties them both to the search for the Anthropocene boundary stratigraphy. Nuclear fallout is one obvious marker, as it was non-existent before the Trinity test in 1945 and the subsequent annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only to be followed by hundreds of further atmospheric tests (528, according to Arms Control Association, with 215 by US and 219 by USSR, 50 by France, 23 China, and 21 UK). But another marker would be to look for buried plastics, which are if anything more ubiquitous. The coincident release of two movies exploring such geologically important shifts is unlikely enough that some people have turned it into a thing. And many are writing on one, the other, or both. I should note that I haven't seen either movie, and I'm not likely to soon -- we just don't do that anymore, but I also gather that the formerly pretty good Warren Theatres we once had here have turned into rat traps under soon-to-be-bankrupt Regal.
Siddhant Adlakha: [07-21] Who's who in Oppenheimer: A guide to 36 scientists, soldiers, and reds. One error here is under Edward Teller, where fission and fusion are reversed. Also, although Teller was the main proponent of a fusion bomb, I doubt that he would have insisted on doing it first, given that such bombs were more difficult, and depended on fission reactions to generate the heat to trigger thermonuclear explosion. Teller's "Super" wasn't tested until 1952, or weaponized until 1954.
Haydn Belfield: [07-22] "Cry baby scientist": What Oppenheimer the film gets wrong about Oppenheimer the man.
Jorge Cotte: [07-21] The many enigmas of Oppenheimer.
Connor Echols: [07-21] What 'Oppenheimer' leaves out: Argues that the first victims of the nuclear age were New Mexicans exposed to nuclear fallout from the Trinity Test. There's a case to be made for that, and also for counting thousands (perhaps millions) of other exposed to explosions up to the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (many developing symptoms only later). Other victims of cancers eventually included virtually every Manhattan Project scientist of note. (I can't think of any exceptions.) I'm unclear on how much thought was put into the dangers of radiation before the bombs were developed and dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dangers of radiation poisoning were recognized by then, if far from perfectly understood.
Whizy Kim: [07-21] This summer's biggest hit? The Barbie marketing team.
David Klion: [07-21] Oppenheimer is an uncomfortably timely tale of destruction.
Tori Otten: [07-21] Barbie breaks box office records as conservatives keep whining about it.
Alexandra Petri: [07-22] The Barbie movie, according to conservative criticism. The article is satire, I think, but starts with links to people you're unlikely to find interesting.
Grace Segers: [07-20] Can Barbie have it all.
Alissa Wilkinson:
Idrees Kahloon: [06-05] Economists love immigration. Why do so many Americans hate it? Well, economists think growth can be infinite. More practical souls ask: where are you going to put it all?
Dylan Matthews: [07-17] The $1 billion gamble to ensure AI doesn't destroy humanity: "The founders of Anthropic quit Open AI to make a safe AI company. It's easier said than done."
Matt McManus/Nathan J Robinson: [07-21] Are we in the grip of an 'American cultural revolution'? Christopher Rufo thinks it's already happened, but he's belatedly fighting back in his book: America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. Sounds like good news, at least until I read the fine print:
The "revolution," in Rufo's telling, is comprised of -- wait for it -- diversity programs at colleges, Black Studies departments, protests against police brutality, and corporations that tweeted pro-BLM platitudes in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. His evidence for dangerous revolutionary changes in our society consists of things like the appearance of the term "institutionalized racism" in the newspaper.
Since "the radical left conquered everything," you might wonder if Rufo is smuggling his missives from jail or some cave, but he's actually been appointed by Ron DeSantis to the board of trustees of New College. I know Robinson's made it his life's worth to debunk the so-called thinkers of the right, but why bother with one this hallucinatory?
Jeffrey St Clair: [07-21] Roaming Charges: Political crying games. He starts with the Congressional smackdown of Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) for identifying Israel as "a racist state" -- a reaction so shrill Jayapal wound up voting for a Resolution proclaiming that Israel is "not racist or an apartheid state" and that "the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel." No doubt such eternal fealty will be tried repeatedly as Israel's state lurches farther and farther to the right.
St Clair offers two quotes, one from Prime Minister Netanyahu ("Israel is not a state of all its citizens but rather, the nation state of the Jewish people and only them") and former PM Ehud Barak ("who says that the current government is 'determined to degrade Israel into a corrupt and racist dictatorship that will crumble society'"). When it does, bank on Congress to pass another near-unanimous Resolution reassuring Israel of America's eternal submission. Israel is no longer an ally. America has become its vassal.
The only argument I can imagine against Israel being a racist state is to question whether Jews are a race. While that has been a common claim in the past, it makes no sense to regard Jews as a race in America or Europe. However, in Europe, government-issued identity cards specify who is a Jew, and who is not, with the latter group subject to further distinctions. And those cards determine the rights you have, and how you are treated by the state, and probably how you are treated by many other organizations. Maybe there's a fancier word for that system, like ethnocracy, but if you're an American, that system sure sounds like racism. And if you know anything about South Africa, you'll probably see affinities to their since-abandoned system of Apartheid.
St Clair also mentions on RFK Jr's attack on Biden for "threatening Israel with ending of the special relationship between our two nations," and his pledge, "As President, my support of Israel will be unconditional." And he quotes Nikki Haley: "The U.S.-Israel alliance is unbreakable because Israel's values are American values." I've long felt that American neocons were jealous of Israel's freedom to bomb their neighbors (and their own people; I'd say "citizens" but they aren't recognized as such) with no fear of repercussions, but I'm not sure most Americans actually share those values. Which ones they do share are hard to pin down, especially given that the most vehemently pro-Israeli Americans are hoping for a rapture which will, or so they believe, consign all Jews to hell. But if you're pro-Israel enough, you never have to worry about being tagged as anti-semitic. (Just consider RFK Jr.)
St Clair also includes more than you want to know about Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town," including a contrast to the late Tony Bennett, whose experiences in small town America included the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march.
More links related to the above:
Jonathan Bernstein: [07-20] Here's what's wrong with Jason Aldean's vision of America.
Julia O'Malley: [07-19] Starving orcas and the fate of Alaska's dispapearing King Salmon.
Jonathan Ofir: [07-20] Yes, Israel is a racist state.
Tori Otten: [07-21] Republicans rush to defend Jason Aldean for racist song filmed at lynching site.
Mitchell Plitnick: [07-20] Herzog's bland speech shows Israel still has great power in DC. Also from before the speech: Richard Silverstein: [07-14] Israeli President Herzog to address joint session of Congress: "A kindler, gentler version of Israeli apartheid."
Pram Thakker: [07-21] Never enough: Now Republicans want to censure Jayapal for Israel comments.
PS: While American politicians are tripping all over themselves to swear allegiance to Israel, note that American elites are starting to have second thoughts:
Max Boot: [07-23] Israel's biggest security threat is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thomas L Friedman: [07-23] Only Biden can save Israel now.
Tweet from No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen:
Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Joe Biden is trying to "finish what FDR started" by trying to address problems related to "rural poverty," "education," and "medical care." She warns it's similar to when LBJ passed "Medicare and Medicaid."
The White House responded:
Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families.
This may prove to be the silver lining in the right-wing bubble: that they can no longer hear themselves when they say things that are incredibly unpopular.
Biden also responded by using Greene as narrator for a 30-second political ad.
I've been reading Peter Turchin's End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, which is a comparative history of several millenia of revolution and civil wars, attempting to glean some quasi-scientific insight into the evident disintegration all around us. Thumbnail histories going back as far as Nero's Rome are always interesting, but his conceptual framework is rather oddly framed if not plainly wrong. He sees two forces that drive societies to the brink of disintegration. Mass immiseration is widely recognized as one. But his main one is what he calls "elite-overproduction," by which he a fractious rivalry between multiple aspirants ("elites," if you must, but limiting that term to the political arena). Whether this is caused by too many elites or simply by weak governing structures is less clear. If sheer numbers of princes were the problem, you'd expect Saudi Arabia to be the most fractious country in the world today, which it plainly isn't.
Given the key concern of immiseration, and his identification of a "wealth pump" driving it, much of Turchin's current political analysis is quite reasonable. But then I ran across this (pp. 219-220):
The Democratic Party has controlled its populist wing and is now the party of the 10 percent and of the 1 percent. But the 1 percent is losing its traditional political vehicle, the Republican Party, which is being taken over by the populist wing. Tucker Carlson, rather than Donald Trump, may be a seed crystal around which a new radical party forms. Or another figure could suddenly arise -- chaotic times favor the rise (and often rapid demise) of new leaders. Earlier I argued that a revolution cannot succeed without large-scale organization. The right-wing populists intend to use the GOP as an already existing organization to group power. An added advantage is that control of one of the main parties offers them a non-violent legal route to power.
Two fairly staggering problems here: if the Democrats are the party of the 1%, how come most known one-percenters are big Republican donors? And how come Republicans campaign for them -- especially with tax cuts, deregulation, and anti-labor measures -- so shamelessly? Given this, it's especially bizarre to paint the Republicans as opposed to plutocracy. Sure, they pander to prejudices and exploit the fears of some people who have not fared well under plutocracy, but where are their programs to shut down the "wealth pump" and offer help to reduce immiseration?
It is true that some of the very rich hobnob with Democrats, that many Democrats are very solicitous of their support, and that Democrats like Clinton and Obama have rewarded such benefactors handsomely -- including doing very little to slow down the wealth pump. Some rich Democrats may see the need for sensible reforms -- Franklin Roosevelt was called "a traitor to his class," but his New Deal did much more than just rescue the poor from the Great Depression: it also saved the banking system, rebuilt industry, and built a large amount of infrastructure, which led to the post-WWII boom. Some may simply be thinking about how much damage dysfunctional Republican ideas could do. And some may simply regard the Democrats as offering better service for their interests.
Turchin's fascination with Tucker Carlson may be excused as he wrote this book before Fox fired him. Still, I have to think that part of Turchin's confusion lies in his overly broad notion of elites, which at various times he divides into economic and credentialed classes. The Democrats have made gains among the latter, mostly because the Republicans have turned savagely against education and expertise, especially science. Still, characterizing this latter-day know-nothingism as "counterelite" conflict ignores who's really in charge, functioning mainly to deflect blame where it is due.