A New New World Order

 One of the shocking developments - in a good way! - has been the global unity in the face of Russian aggression. As of my count, Russia's international support consists of Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Donald Trump. There are other countries like China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and India who have played the "bothsides" bullshit, but have generally called for peace. In other words, NATO and the US are bad, but let's stop with the war, OK?

As the Russian economy craters, the ability of Russia to buy support will likely lead to softening support among groups and nations that rely on petro-rubles to prop them up. While North Korea doesn't care, a country like Belarus could see its own blowback from participating in Putin's war.  Alexander Lukashenko's hold on power was challenged by domestic unrest in 2020-21. His decision to support Putin could put his much weaker economy in the crosshairs of global sanctions. 

It would be darkly hilarious if Putin initiated a war to achieve regime change in Kyiv and created it in Minsk instead.

Ukraine has seized on this moment to ask for EU membership. We shall see if Finland and Sweden join NATO; Kosovo has asked to join.

If Putin survives but leaves Ukraine, will the sanctions remain in place? 

Will the West maintain resolve once their own economies start hurting?

What will global security arrangements look like when this is all done?

One thing, I trust Biden and his team to make good long term decisions about this.

Will It Matter? An Ongoing Series

 One of the defining hallmarks of the Age of Trump is that normally career-ending events have less impact than they should. The Access Hollywood tape, the naked racism, being twice impeached, bungling a pandemic response, rank criminality and incompetence...it's a really remarkable run. 

This has led the Vicious Spawn of Trump to assume that saying or doing anything simply doesn't matter. Marjorie Traitor Greene speaks at a white supremacist klavern? Whatevs. Ron DeSantis kills a bunch of Floridians with aggressively stupid pandemic responses? Guess he's the frontrunner.

The current moment with Ukraine, and the Far Right's embrace of Putin, is a fascinating case study in whether anything really "matters" anymore. Dan Nexon (at the link) notes that European Rightists were given the space to operate because the Soviets were gone. They took aid and comfort from Putin, but if he starts behaving like the Brezhnev Doctrine is still in effect, then those Western norms and values start looking pretty good. Orban and Erdogan have both staked serious positions against Russia.

In the US, however, we have the putative head of the Republican Party who simply can't help but praise Putin while attacking America's current leaders. Tucker Carlson - vying with Trump for the World's Worst Person - is starting to edge away from Russia, after it has become clear that what Putin has done is simply egregiously wrong. Plus, the sanctions have to hurt those who have been getting money under the table from Moscow for years. 

My hope against hope is obviously that Ukraine inflicts a massive defeat on Russian troops in the next few days, and the Russian army balks at wanton destruction. Rather than escalate into a mass bombings of civilian areas, the army simply says "fuck off" to Putin. It was the army, largely, in 1917 that brought down Tsar Nicholas; perhaps they can bring down Tsar Vladimir.

If that does happen, I hope every single tie with Russia gets exposed. At this moment with everyone except Belarus, Trump and Glenn Greenwald turning on Putin, if we can out all the dirty underground connections, perhaps we can drive a stake through the heart of Trumpist admiration for reprehensible dictators like Putin is and Trump wants to be.

Courage

 I've been away at a wrestling tournament, but I always had half an eye on the developments in Ukraine, obviously. It seems clear that Ukrainians, led at least in moral courage by their president, have put up a tremendous fight. I would not expect that to slacken.

Putin may very well have anticipated that Ukrainians would not fight to the death to preserve their national autonomy. That could be a case of the sort of epistemological closure that we see in authoritarian regimes (or the second Bush Administration). Maybe he really thought that Ukrainians wouldn't put up a fight, but their courage is proving legendary. From Snake Island to the Sunflower Lady, Ukrainians have shown a poetic fierceness in opposing this invasion. As military aid, including from Germany, starts to flow to Ukraine - openly, with no pretense or plausible deniability from NATO - and the Russian advance stalls, the worse things get for Russia.

There are two outcomes, if this continues to drag out: defeat of Russia or devastation of Ukraine. Putin has presented himself - at least to other Russians - as a liberator of Ukraine. So there has been a certain restraint to Russia's invasion. They have not bombed residential neighborhoods indiscriminately. They haven't engaged in "total war" tactics designed to destroy a county's ability to fight. 

They could, if things start to go even worse. 

Alternatively, Russia's will to fight against their cousins could erode in the face of stiff opposition. Watch for any signs of Russian units surrendering. The fact that large numbers of Russian troops - a largely conscript army that isn't especially well trained - have been held back, while more elite units go in, could suggest that Russian leaders worry about the reliability of their second tier troops to wage war on their neighbors. If we see a few mass surrenders, where company sized units essentially desert, that could be the tipping moment of the war.

With countries like Kazakhstan and China refusing to go along with this and EU countries slowly moving to ban Russia from SWIFT, this could be a regime change moment.  Just not in Ukraine.

Madness

 Vladimir Putin has unleashed a war in Europe for the first time in several decades to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and install a puppet government. His claim that he wants to "demilitarize...Ukraine" means that he wants a Ukraine that is prostrate beneath Russian control. He will likely be able to achieve some measure of this. The Ukrainian military will not be able to withstand a full scale invasion.

Long term control of Ukraine will require a great deal of brutality. The war could be short or it could be long. But any attempt to keep control of Ukraine will run into the same problem that America faced in Iraq: insurgency and guerilla warfare. Ukrainian paramilitary forces will be well supplied by Europe and America and able to keep up a long war against Russian control. Any puppet regime will have to rely on brutal oppression to stay in power. 

In 2014, the Maidan Revolution overthrew pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych with primarily civil disobedience. A Russian-backed dictatorship is unlikely to restrain from using violence to suppress civil disobedience. But if Russia leaves Ukraine, it will quickly revert to a pro-European government that will be generously supplied with Western weaponry. Putin has said he doesn't want to occupy Ukraine, but I struggle to see a way for him to keep Ukraine weak without staying.

The long term consequence for Russia will likely be bleak as well. The world seems remarkably unified in opposing this action. My hope is that the economic consequences on Russia will be brutal and undermine Putin's grip on power, but the latter is unlikely. At the very least, I hope this further isolates Russia as a uniquely malevolent actor on the world stage.

I know several Ukrainian students. I have no idea what to tell them. 

This is a crime against them, and it is a crime against the entire post-World War II peace architecture in Europe.

UPDATE: Also, and sincerely from the bottom of my heart. Fuck these people.

The March Of Folly

 With southeastern Europe on everyone's minds, it seems that World War I revisionism is all the rage these days. Last night I watched the exceedingly mediocre The King's Man, which purports to be the origin story of the vapid Kingsmen series. I wasn't expecting great art, but...still.

I then awaken to read this twaddle. The gap between Good Yglesias and Bad Yglesias is so large it cannot be measured with current science. 

His argument is basically that the Austro-Hungarian empire was "good" and would have become a beacon to the world if not for the assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo. He's an admitted fan of "Alternate History" which is kind of a weird thing to be a fan of. Still, the argument that "history would be different if things weren't the way they were" is not much of an argument.

The causes of World War I have been mulled over and studied for a century. The most compelling cause that I've found is that you have three decaying empires - the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman and the Russian - vying to shape the emerging states on their flanks in the Balkans. It was precisely the weakness of these empires that led them to war. Germany's entrance into the war was on behalf of it's weaker ally, and knocking France out of the war was necessary to defeat Russia. Going through Belgium brought Britain in. Germany and Britain had the most to lose in a war, which is why their politicians (as opposed to the Kaiser) worked hard to avoid it.

The weakness of Russia in 1914, especially, is on  my mind. Russia had been defeated by the Japanese in 1905 and had experienced a half-revolution thereafter. Its leadership was generally poor, with intermittent periods of competence, however, there was no doubt that Russia was weaker than Germany, if perhaps equal to or stronger than the Austrians.

People make poor choices when they feel threatened. Weakness begets rash boastfulness and "projections of strength." This is what typified decision making in Vienna and St. Petersburg. 

What worries me is that Russia today is behaving like Russia in 1914. They are weak and relatively isolated, so they are picking on a weaker neighbor. My hope is that the rest of Europe is not weak - or at least not as weak as the Hapsburg Empire in 1914. Led by the US, Europe - and increasingly Asia - are acting in concert to counteract Russian aggression. 

This collective response is precisely the architecture begun with the League of Nations and expanded upon by the United Nations that was designed to prevent another World War I. It is also the architecture that Putin wishes to dismantle, precisely because it is evidence of Russian weakness.

You can miscalculate out of strength, the way the US did in Iraq, but you can also miscalculate out of weakness.

Dance Macabre

 We now enter the stage of the Ukraine crisis where things become very delicate. Previously, there was bluster and threats, but now we will see how the West responds to Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine. There are already a host of sanctions beginning to take effect. The key will be to slowly ratchet up the pressure. Putting all the sanctions in place at once will not allow for more measures to be taken should Russian forces cross over into Ukrainian held territory.

By moving into separatist-held regions, Putin can plausibly claim victory while leaving large troop deployments in the effectively annexed areas. He does not need to invade Free Ukraine to keep screwing with it. He will try and force Ukraine to exhaust itself by staying in a constant defensive posture for months.

Meanwhile, the West should continually ramp up pressures on Russia, especially people close to Putin. Putin stays in power by privileging a set of "state oligarchs" called the siloviki, who emerged - like him - from state security.  If you can sufficiently punish them, the desire to keep him in power wanes. 

Russia is not a wealthy country; its' leaders are. Make them howl, and if it damages the rest of Russia's economy, so be it. If it hurts the Covid recovery, so be it. Beats a land war in Europe.

Why We Are So Broken

 This is a great snippet from Scott Lemieux. All of these "protest movements" against masks and vaccines and teaching accurate history are actually not anywhere close to being popular. These are fringe movements with lunatics staffing the ranks. 

The presence of the Right Wing Wurlitzer and social media takes a few cranks and makes a movement out of them. They mainstream the idiocy into public discourse, so that we think everyone on the Right is screaming for Ivermectin and coughing in people's faces. And everyone on the Right thinks the Left is entirely the San Francisco School Board.

We need to stop amplifying awful people.

Putin's Escape Hatch

 First, if you want to know what's really going on in the Ukraine/Russia situation, don't watch cable news. They have their war-boners on and it's really just breathless bullshit.

Anyway, Putin has miscalculated that the West would collapse in the face of sustained pressure. The Biden/NATO information war has been on point, constantly painting Putin into a corner. 

My guess is that Putin will annex the eastern areas of Ukraine already under separatist control. It is approaching mud season in Russia and the ability to conduct maneuver warfare will be constrained. Simply taking what he already effectively has allows him to continue to pressure Ukraine and will test the resolve of Western sanctions. Sanctions will hurt Europe. Russia will be hurt more, but Europe will feel it and might not want to pummel their post-Covid recoveries to defend Donetsk.

My guess is that he has miscalculated about that, too, but that he will use the seizure of Eastern Ukraine as a "victory" to climb down from the peak of this crisis.

Ya Done Fucked Up P-Putin

 I have no idea if Putin will launch a ground invasion of Ukraine. I am not certain he knows. I could certainly see a formal annexation of territories in Donetsk already under effective Russian control. Maybe he invades, maybe he doesn't.

But Josh Marshall is right, in that Putin has made a disastrous miscalculation when it comes to NATO. He presumed he could fracture the coalition, maybe through the sort of ongoing fuckery that he has perpetrated in the West for the past five years or more. All of Putin's actions have served to reinvigorate and revivify NATO at exactly the time he was trying to get the US out of Europe.

It also might serve to give a boost to Joe Biden. If Putin invades, then it shows why having a Putin stooge like Trump in the White House is a bad thing. If he doesn't invade, then Biden "wins" and looks "presidential."

Obviously, the current loser is Ukraine, even if Putin doesn't invade, as they have and will be living under the threat of invasion for a long time. But Russia isn't "winning" this one, because it was a fight they did not need to have. Ukraine was not poised to join NATO, and it was not poised to join the EU. This looks to be a serious "own goal" that we typically do see from closed decision making regimens in autocracies. 

Fools And Their Imaginary Money

 The Gilded Age was known for its charlatans. Health quacks like Kellogg who prescribed corn flakes to stop people from masturbating. Shameless showmen like Barnum who suckered people in with false advertising.

We seem to have entered a new Age of Charlatans. Elon Musk peacocks around like a modern day mix of Edison, Ford and Einstein, when really he makes a shitty, unsafe car. We have the unhinged saga of Mike Lindell. Then there is cryptocurrency. 

Crypto seems very much like a Ponzi scheme, in the sense that it is a thing of no intrinsic value that rises in value because some new sucker wants to buy it. As long as there is a new sucker to buy it, the value rises, but eventually you run out of suckers and have to advertise during the Super Bowl.

I remain worried that crypto will prompt a financial crisis and financial crises have long, punishing tails. I do hope there are some efforts to limit the exposure of financial institutions to nonsense like NFTs or Bitcoin, but that is likely a fool's hope.

Meanwhile, Trump's new social media site has a fee of $4.95... A WEEK!

Musk and crypto and Trump all have their fanbois out there making stupid decisions based on their feels and vibes, but as long as they don't trash things for the rest of us, I guess they can be suckers all they want.

Assessing Obama

 Paul Campos takes a moment to examine some of the criticisms leveled against Obama. The inspiration for this are comments from David Sirota. whom Campos correctly notes is a jackass. Sirota is part of the Troll Left who constituted a certain sector of Toxic Bernie Stans. His criticisms of Obama must be understood in that light. Sirota's argument is that Obama came in with a "huge mandate" and squandered it by being too moderate.

Campos notes that Obama's election itself was a radical act, but the thing about Sirota and other Berners is that they filter everything through the magical filter of socialist class consciousness. Race is a distraction. This is why they thought they could win West Virginia with Sanders instead of Clinton. It's...stupid.

I would note that Obama won primarily because of his opposition to the Iraq war. This is what differentiated him from Hillary Clinton. Clinton had been ambivalent in her support of the war in 2003, whereas Obama was unequivocally opposed. That won him the nomination. He was winning when the economy hit the shitter, and that largely padded his margins and helped get him the 60 seat Senate majority to pass ACA. ACA was a Big Fucked Deal, but to someone like Sirota it's insufficient, because he's a jackass.

If Sirota's argument was that Obama didn't do enough to get us out of Iraq quickly, I think there is some merit to that, but Obama DID basically end American combat in Iraq, even if it "took too long."  Here's the proof.

Of course, Obama also "killed bin Laden" and he did drone stuff that allowed Leftists to attack him for not being sufficiently pacifistic. Not that Obama ran as a pacifist so much as a "don't fight stupid wars."

The collapse of the economy in the fall of 2008 was not inherently tied to Obama's mandate. We still had no idea how bad it was in October and early November, aside from "BAD." Certainly, John McCain was not an ideal candidate to run in a cratering economy for the incumbent party, but Obama did not run on a detailed economic platform. If his mandate was tied to a repudiation of Bush's foreign policy and general dissatisfaction with Republican economic policies, that's not the same as Biden's extensive social spending platform. 

Historically speaking, Obama will be viewed pretty favorably because of the man who preceded him and succeeded him. Rightly or wrongly, Reagan benefits from being wedged between Carter and Bush 41. Basic competency distinguishes Obama from Bush 43 and basic human decency (and competency) distinguishes him from Trump. In an era of polarization - and the racial freakout Campos describes - Obama's accomplishments don't measure up objectively to FDR or LBJ's, but they represent a reasonable interlude between very bad presidencies.

He's not going to challenge the Lincoln/Washington/FDR triumvirate, but he will be seen as a Good to Very Good president.

Two Takes On Ukraine

 Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Post makes the argument that what's happening in Ukraine is largely our fault. She derides Ukraine as a failed state, demonstrating that she doesn't really know what a failed state is or taking into account the extremely damaging role that Russia has played in destroying Ukraine's chances for economic growth. She then basically says that the US-led post-Cold War order is dead  because America does sanctions and Bush invaded Iraq, so why are we even pretending to have principles. She suggests that there is a weird intransigence on "both sides" to prevent a deal that creates an independent, sovereign Ukraine that is officially neutral. Golly gee, why hadn't anyone thought of this before?! I bet the national security team is kicking themselves over this.

Of course, Vladimir Putin is not interested in a neutral, successful, democratic Ukraine. This crisis wasn't created by NATO suddenly deciding to admit Ukraine, it was created by Vladimir Putin to bring Ukraine back into a subservient relationship to Moscow. 

Josh Marshall, as usual, has a much better analysis on where we are and how we got there. One thing I thing he ignores was that there was talk in the '90s of eventually admitting a democratic Russia into NATO. The logical endpoint of NATO expansion was to end the old Cold War dynamic by folding NATO's great enemy within a collective security framework. Marshall is right in describing a lot of that thinking as naïve, but it wasn't malicious. Russia sees it as malicious.

Most media coverage of foreign policy is deeply stupid and tends to see the US as the only actor with agency, the only protagonist on the world stage who matters. As a result, whatever happens in Ukraine is America's fault/responsibility. This is absurd. 

However, the "debate" over what the US is doing right now largely falls inside this stupid frame. A large part of security policy is to disrupt your opponents "OODA Loop." The principle of an OODA loop is that a decision maker will Observe the situation, Orient your options via analysis, Decide what to do and then Act on that decision. Having Acted, you then Observe and the loop continues. 

If you can disrupt this process, you disrupt your opponent's ability to act. The US and its allies have been absolutely shredding Russia's OODA loop. All the statements about "Russia is about to invade" or "Russia will create a border incident to justify an invasion" or whatever are designed to interfere with Russia's decision making. Broadcasting Russia's intentions makes it so that they can't act within their own parameters. They are constantly having to adjust to what NATO is saying. 

Putin forced the crisis, but NATO and the US is currently making it so that his options grow more limited by the day.

I've been legitimately in the dark as to what Putin and Russia will do, but it looks increasingly like his bluff was called. Ukraine did not collapse. The West did not fold to demands. Can he find an Exit Ramp that allows him to claim a victory? 

Regardless, if Russia backs down, there will be ample voices in the media saying that this just proves Putin is reasonable and never wanted war. The latter part is true, because he knew it would be hard for Russia to win a prolonged invasion of Ukraine. The rest is bullshit. If Putin backs down, it will be because Biden and the rest of NATO called him on his shit.

Christianism

 Paul Campos analyzes the literature on the impact of Christian Nationalism on January 6th. As increasing numbers of young Americans drop away from religion, those who strongly identify with an atavistic evangelism feel increasingly under siege. Although we all feel "under siege" right now, Christianism gives a union of deep belief and political focus to a group of people who vote in disproportionate numbers.

Saving democracy likely involves getting these authoritarians to despair and give up on the political process. 

Superb Owl Thoughts

 Hey, everything is about politics in America in 2022, and the Super Bowl was no exception.

First, the halftime show drew condemnation from Republicans and a bunch of racists on social media. Frankly, the only halftime show that was better was Prince, but whatever. The Right Wing freak out over the show demonstrates conclusively (as if conclusive proof were needed) that the only thing holding the right together anymore is a series of overblown grievances and manufactured outrage.

Second, the decision to award the MVP to Cooper Kupp was strange. Matthew Stafford threw for 283 yards and 3 TDs, and the Rams defensive line blew up the game in the second half with Aaron Donald getting 2 huge sacks. Giving it to the "gritty hardworking" white wide receiver seems...odd. He had a very good game, but was he the MVP? It was Stafford who threw those dimes to him. Cincinnati scored a field goal with less than four minutes gone in the third and never scored again. Kupp do that? Look, he's a great player, but the undersized, hardworking "gritty" white guy thing seems forced.

Revisiting 2020 polling

 As we come up on the 2022 midterms, believing in polling could be hazardous to your health. First of all, midterm polling is really hard. Finding out who is actually going to schlepp themselves to the polls is way harder than in presidential years. Anyway, I looked at the polling data leading in to the 2020 election and the final results. I focused on the swing states. First, I looked at the polling aggregates. Second, I looked at a model if the polls were as wrong as they were in 2016. Then I looked at the actual results.

Back in 2016, the polls significantly undercounted support for Trump. Did they do the same in 2020? Yes. In every swing state, Biden underperformed his polling aggregates. In some states, they were off by a lot.

Let's take Wisconsin. Aggregates had Biden at +10, 2016 Model had him at+4, actual results were +0.6.

Nevada was even stranger, as the Aggregate had Biden +6, but the 2016 Model had him at +8, but he finished at +2.4.

In Minnesota, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, he outperformed the 2016 model. Minnesota's 2016 Model was Biden +4 and he won +7.1; Pennsylvania was +1 and he won +1.2; North Carolina's 2016 Model was -3 and he lost -1.

All of these brings me back to Margin of Error. Polling aggregates are designed to reduce the margins of error, but let's assume that the MoE is the usual 3%. Only in Minnesota, North Carolina and Georgia did Biden come within the 3% margin of error for the aggregates. However, if you use the 2016 Model, Biden was within the MoE nationally and in New Hampshire, Michigan, Arizona, Ohio, Iowa and Texas. This makes Florida, Nevada and Wisconsin the real outliers.

The Million Dollar Question as we enter another season of polling and prognosticating is why Biden (and Clinton) underperformed their polling numbers. Obviously, pollsters either couldn't reach Trump voters or accurately sample Trump voters. Given how embarrassing 2016 was for pollsters, I doubt it's a sampling error so much as they simply could not get Trump voters to pick up the phone.

The Billion Dollar Question is more important. Are those Invisible Trump Voters dedicated to Trump or Trumpism? If they really are in Cult 45 and it is "Trump as Trump" who is critical to them, they might not show up to support RINOs and non-Trumpists in the midterms. 

They did not in 2018.

Indeed, Trumpists have seem to fall into that irregular voter demographic, and hopefully that continues to be the case in 2022. Democrats have escaped the direst predictions for re-districting and the Senate map looks favorable to them, but they will have to turn out their voters and hope the die-hard Trumpists stay home.

Your Two Minutes Of Hate

 Jon Chait notes the wild inconsistencies of the GOP response to the Biden Administration's public health positions. He follows GOP critiques of Covid policy back to March of 2020, when Covid restrictions were simply a way for liberals to defeat Donald Trump by hurting America with lockdowns and quarantine measures. It was "just the flu" and the efforts taken to mitigate a disease that has killed at least a million Americans were simply a political stratagem. Tucker Carlson - vying for the honor of being the worst American after Donald Trump - predicted that after the election, Democrats would roll back Covid mitigation efforts, because, again, it was all theater.

Biden's team DID roll back some mitigation efforts in June, only for Delta to come along and kick people's ass. When Omicron came along, they tried to ramp those measures back up, but they ran into resistance from those who were "over the pandemic" because they are self-centered assholes. As vaccination becomes a way out of the pandemic, masking and the like becomes less tenable among those who are vaxxed and the "just the flu" crowd never cared in the first place.

This is example 1,963,744 of the GOP only understanding politics as a competition for power rather than as a means to provide public services. The reason we did Covid mitigation was to save lives. It's why we still do mitigation efforts. Since the overwhelming number of people dying are unvaccinated, there has been a strong movement among the vaccinated to relax all measures. The fact that deaths have neared their January 2021 peak doesn't seem to register with the "over the pandemic" crowd, whether they are vaxxed or not. The important thing for the GOP is the "optics" and the polling numbers. 

The GOP does not stand for anything except the GOP being in power. I suppose tax cuts for the rich and deregulation count for something, but neither are especially popular. They need to feed on fear and the ephemera of politics rather than policy. Returning to masking this January was sucked, but it hasn't sucked THAT much. It's a hassle. I would rather not do it. But I'm a grown up and not a whiny ass titty baby like Tucker Carlson.

Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci want to save as many lives as possible from a deadly disease. Tucker Carlson wants you to hate Democrats more than you love your own health and wellbeing. And the GOP could very well win the midterms.

Stop Doom Scrolling

 Both Martin Longman and Matt Yglesias take on the prevailing sense of doom in progressive circles. Longman looks at the broader picture and Yglesias focuses on climate change, but they both describe a sort of continual panic among left of center people. Some of this is a product of four years of living under the presidency of one of the worst human beings in American history. The non-stop effrontery to basic decency and competency was bad enough, but the number of Americans who cheered it on was what was so depressing. We went through this in 2004, when it seemed like John Kerry might derail the disastrous Bush Presidency. Alas.

I mean, I get it. I understand why people re-electing the architect of Abu Ghraib or devoting themselves to worshipping a man caught in tape bragging about sexual assault could cause people to be upset. I know that a Big Issue like climate change can feel overwhelming. 

There is, nevertheless, a tendency on the left to do two things. The first is to look at our closely divided politics - but a politics where the left of center outnumbers the right of center - and despair that America is hopelessly racist and sexist. The second is to presume that the past was better than the present in some way. Both perspectives seem wrong to me.

On the first point, 16 years ago, same sex marriage was a wedge issue that Republicans used to win elections. Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were raping women with impunity. America was embarking on two long and fruitless wars. Carbon emissions were rising to alarming levels. Does that mean that there are not still horrible people? Of course not. But if you look at a simpering idiot like Marjorie Traitor Greene and assume she's the average American, you're going to despair. She's not, though. She's part of a rearguard that's losing every major cultural battle - either yesterday or today or in the future. That "L"  branded on her forehead is why Conservatives are so furious. They are losing; they know it; they are despondent. 

On the second point, Yglesias touches on this, but it's about the weird relationship progressive-leaning people have with the past. Things are objectively better today than they have even been in recorded history. You can focus on vaccine hesitancy and miss the fact that we brought a new vaccine that works amazingly well from the lab to people's arms in record time. And that this new mRNA technology can be quickly applied to new variants AND existing diseases like malaria and HIV. I drive a hybrid SUV that can get 35 MPG on some trips. That's amazing. 

There's a whole school of dipshit anarchists who think that living in medieval Europe was great, because you ate a healthier diet - no Big Macs - neglecting to look at the life expectancy in the 30s. The world today is amazing, but we are perpetually focused on what is wrong. We are addicted to outrage and angst.

Some of this, I think, is a product of how good things are. We are hard wired for threats and most of us live incredibly safe lives. We no longer worry about demented gods or strange beasts in the dark, so we obsess over whatever threat that DOES exist. Crime is down historically, but spiking in some areas. So we become monomaniacal over the "crime wave" that we read about on Fucking Facebook. Social media feeds off out outrage, whether it's a conservative ranting over Brian Flores pointing out that the NFL doesn't really care about Black people rising in the coaching ranks or a liberal fulminating over Trump tearing up documents because he's an idiot who thinks he's Meyer Lansky. 

I suppose if there were one thing I would do, it would be to address the way social media focuses on stimulating our amygdala with things that are designed to outrage people. I don't know what we can do about the fact that if you are trying to raise money for Planned Parenthood, you need to convince the people on your mailing list that all abortions are about to be outlawed, rather than heavily, heavily restricted. The accumulation of that messaging is bad, but likely unsolvable. 

Remember: Trump failed on January 6th. He never came close, because he didn't have the military or the police on his side, because he's a goddamned criminal. It was awful, but it was more spectacle than actual threat to democracy. That's bad, but it's not the end of the world.

In the end, good DOES triumph. Ask Hitler or Pol Pot.

Busted Pundit Brain

 I offer two examples of "Busted Pundit Brain."

First, we have Matthew Yglesias casually hand-waiving away the unique awfulness of Putin's regime. There is nothing "irrational" about wanting to curb the Kremlin's international influence. They are arguably the largest "bad actor" on the international stage, and that includes Beijing (who are mostly malevolent at home). This is the glib YOLO mindset of the terminally "savvy" who don't think ideals matter.

Second, we predictably have the execrable Marc Thiessen (a high school classmate of mine). Thiessen sadly rose to prominence working for the colossally wrong Donald Rumsfeld. He has bought into the idea that America must always be everywhere. He naturally brings up Afghanistan as a sign of "Biden's weakness." Afghanistan was fucked up by his former boss, because no one in Bushworld knew a damned thing about nation building, including at home (ask the people of New Orleans).

This bullshit posturing about "American credibility" is to presume that every problem in the world is an American problem. Thiessen implausibly argues that NATO's credibility will lie in tatters, because...reasons? Ukraine isn't in NATO. How the hell is that an impact on NATO's credibility? If India invades Pakistan is that undermining NATO's credibility? 

One thing Yglesias does get right is that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to be a disaster for Russia (and Ukraine, though he doesn't bother with that). Russia is not a rich country. Invading Ukraine is likely to be a quagmire that will grind up Putin's new military. He will face a long insurgency, economic sanctions and more international fallout. NATO will supply Ukrainians with the means to conduct their insurgency, including small drones and anti-aircraft missiles. We did it to the Soviets in Afghanistan and we will do it in Ukraine. For dickbrains like Thiessen, it's all about macho posturing, not actual conduct on the ground.

Absent from both arguments is the very real suffering that this will cause Ukrainians. THAT is the reason for a negotiated settlement.

The Internationale

 In America, we tend to look at global trends and assume they are just things about America, because foreign countries don't exist. So, Trumpism is a uniquely American phenomenon. 

Except it's not.

Antivax nonsense is not unique to the United States, what IS unique to the US is that a major political party is pushing this nonsense, as opposed to marginal Rightist groups in Europe and Canada. 

A lot of these roads lead back to Moscow. Russia is a weak nation economically, overly dependent on resource extraction and little hope to leverage its human capitol, as it experiences a brain drain to the West. It has nukes, sure, but the main thing it does is ratfuck the West. Russia helped fund Brexit, Catalonian independence and Trump. They push anti-vax nonsense to cripple and divide their foes.

From a Russian perspective, the rest of the world is out to get them, so they must divide the rest of the world into warring camps that cannot focus on them. Putin's recent saber rattling over Ukraine has achieved the exact opposite of his goals and united the West against him. I would guess he's looking for an exit ramp.

Still, if Russia was not a dysfunctional petro-state relying on exacerbating the West's own dysfunctions, we would be a lot better off.

Yeah, I Was Right

 I've been saying for a while now that gerrymandering was unlikely to be the catastrophe that Democratic doomsayers were predicting. Now it seems that I was right. A few things happened. 

First, as predicted, the states that gained and lost seats were not necessarily going to help Republicans hold on to seats.

Second, they gerrymandered so aggressively where they could, that there were no more gerrymanders to create.

Third, Democratic controlled states finally saw the light and gerrymandered their own maps.

Fourth, Courts have been reluctant to endorse the worst gerrymanders (though the five worst judges in the world have seemingly given it a thumbs up).

Anyway, Democrats would currently still lose the House in November if things don't improve, but I have a hunch they will. Then the GQP will nominate a bunch of raving lunatics and all bets are off.

Another Brick In The Wall

 Donald Trump violated norms, which is why his followers love him. He's the rich guy who gets away with shit that they very much want to be.

Anyways, Trump clearly and irrefutably violated federal law. Violating the Presidential Records Act is...OK, it's not shooting someone in the face in Fifth Avenue...but it's a clear, egregious and willful violation of that law. The Post notes that previous violations are usually things like failing to use the proper email account or talking on a personal phone. Lapses of 'best practices.' 

Trump - who is paranoid about his OTHER crimes coming to light - destroyed and his documents that he was explicitly told to preserve. Some of this was just his habit from his days engaging in real estate and tax fraud, but who knows what he destroyed as president.

The "Merrick Garland Needs To Do Something" Club gets on my nerves, because you don't rush into prosecuting the former President of the United States. It's not just a norms thing. How in the world do you find an impartial jury? Your case has to be locked up tighter than any you've ever prosecuted. I get that they don't want to rush into something.

However, bringing a small-bore prosecution over this small-bore violation of the law might free up more documents and Trump's hoped-for plea deal could remove some post-presidential perks.  It's a small thing, but the DOJ needs to do a little "fan service."

The Constituencies Of Trumpistan

 David Roth wrote a post-mortem on Trump's autogolpe last year. There was a subtle thread there that struck me about why various people embraced Trump.

We've spent six years pondering the question as to why a significant number of Americans have backed this obvious con artist. For the "reality based community," Trump's obvious signal failures have left us agog at those who simply can't accept that Trump is exactly who we say he is.

I've written at length about the Evangelicals and how their outsized presence in our country is warping democracy. Their dogmatic insistence on a Magical Sky Daddy who controls everything makes them unable to grok the idea of personal agency expressed through electoral institutions. So they are the main cogs in the grievance engine of Trumpism. We can add the virulent racists, sexists and anti-Semites to that group. These are the ones that Adam Serwer was writing about when he said "the cruelty is the point."

Roth's piece though moves beyond the screaming viciousness of Trumpism and glances briefly on Trump as "Rich Guy." A lot has been written - both editorially and straight up factually - about how Trump was not actually THAT rich. He lived rich by living off debt, bankrupting companies and skating away to the next grift or con. The recent departure of Jeff Zucker from CNN has highlighted how Zucker and Mark Burnett created an entirely fictitious Trump for reality TV's The Apprentice. Trump's career is a cascade of failures as a businessman and a series of garish successes as a salesman of his "brand."

Trump's faux opulence was probably an underrated aspect of his appeal. It's natural for those to the center and left to be drawn to Trump's racism and sexism, especially after his 2016 campaign, where he committed any number of political "sins" and yet managed to "win" anyway. We see what disgusts us most. But as someone said (Coates?) it wasn't necessarily Trump's racism and sexism that made him appealing but that it "wasn't a deal breaker." 

I think maybe what we should understand is that we - quite rightly - see America as a society cleaved in two, but how that cleavage exists is a matter of great debate. Rural v Urban; Red State v Blue State; College v High School; POC v White. Roth points out obliquely that it is really Normal v Rich. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that the rich are different than you and me. We've boggled at the accumulated wealth of someone like Jeff Bezos. There are millions of Americans - very much the majority - that enjoy lives of comfort beyond the imaginings of someone 200, 100 or even 50 years ago. No large society in human history has been richer.

Simply being "well off" with most of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs easily checked off has made us dream of lives of the super-rich. For Bezos or Gates or Musk, the rules are simply different. For the very wealthy, the small constraints of 21st century life melt away. Trump's Grab'em By The P***** tape was important because he said it and got away with it. Not just the tape, but the sexual assault of which he bragged. He skated from failed company to failed marriage to failed casino without every slowing down, becoming a reality TV star. 

When you're famous, they let you do it.

Trump's one actual talent is selling Trump: both as a brand and as an "experience." "Come stay in one of my garish, gilded casinos, and live like me!" "Take Trump University courses so you can be successful like me!" "Eat Trump steaks so you can be fat and happy like me!"

The people who flew to Washington on private jets 11 months ago were people who were on the edge of that Trumpian level of opulence. They weren't there, but they wanted to be there. If only "those people" weren't being given so many advantages over good White people (and a handful of Black and Brown people) like us. Trump is a direct descendant of Russel Conwell's Acres of Diamonds sermon preaching the Gospel of Wealth. He's the Risen Messiah of the churches that Joel Osteen's ministers.

Trump is what happens when a country worships wealth, because wealth allows you to break the rules. In their eyes, America is a paradoxical country of great wealth, but also some constraints on what you can and cannot do because some "cultural betters" say that we can't say the N-word anymore or hit on a co-worker. Trump is the avatar of crashing through those constraints. 

His transgressions are as much the point as the cruelty, because his ability to skate through consequences demonstrates for all his cultists that once they get rich enough, they can skate through consequences, too.

This Is Actually Helpful

 So naturally, it wasn't written by Yglesias, but by his intern.

So many bullshit arguments about what Covid mitigation efforts work or don't work are premised on the poor enforcement of them. Singh teases that out, so you can know that masks do work, but you need to actually wear one. 

I got in a Twitter argument with someone who was "over" the pandemic and wasn't going to wear a mask because he was triple vaxxed. He will probably be fine, but he could spread it to someone who won't be fine, but the prevailing attitude is, that other guy should've gotten vaxxed.  Yes, he should have. And the question of what we owe to someone who won't get vaxxed is a tricky ethical question. If you aren't getting vaxxed - which is free, safe and effective - then why should I care about your health? You clearly don't. But you are also a human being, and I shouldn't blithely risk your health, because I find a mask inconvenient.

Singh also points out which vaccine programs work best, and the answer is: mandates. However, we live in a deeply stupid country that equates freedom of speech and assembly with the right to risk the public health. This is like saying that I have the freedom to drive drunk, because this is America and the Constitution says nothing about driving drunk. Hey, you could very well make it home alive. Or you could kill yourself or someone else. That's not freedom in anything but a weird absolutist sense.

Singh mentions a universal coronavirus vaccine that could protect us against future strains of SARs viruses. However, we've become so incredibly thickheaded over the subject of vaccines, that I despair that we will ever get the societal and global protection we need.

We once obliterated small pox and have nearly obliterated polio. We have shown too many of us simply don't care about other people to make that a reality again.

The Republican Party...

 ...has gone insane.

American Innumeracy, An Ongoing Series

 I'm...not good at math. So it was with some interest that I read this about why America is having such bad Covid numbers in the Omicron surge, compared to other G20 countries. If we compare 95% vaccination rates with 85% rates, we instinctively think that it is only a 10% difference, because we count up from zero. In fact, we count down from 100 and that means 85% is three times worse than 95%, so we see health outcomes that are three times worse.

Meanwhile, we have batshit insane actions like Iowa's, where they've decided to solve Covid by simply not counting how many cases they have. Oh, and they will shut down the website telling people where to get the vaccine. 

America is a society that is perfectly fine with killing each other, either with an overabundance of guns or rampant viruses. But the truly important thing is that no one teaches kids that racism is bad.

I Wish It Mattered

 There are two stories I've read today that frustrate me.

The first is that Texas has lost power again. This is a direct example of poor governance. Texas has this problem because it's a poorly governed state. Full stop. They refuse to fix their grid. That should lead to Beto O'Rourke winning the governor's race, but it won't happen.

The second is that Biden has followed through with Trump's promises to the working class. Unlike that bloviating jackass, Biden has actually brought manufacturing back to America under Democratic legislation. That should lead to Democratic gains in the midterms. It will not.

The fundamental principle of democratic governance is that the electorate chooses which party to run the country based on outcomes to policy. That ain't the way it works, and I don't know how to fix that.

Can They Trojan Horse A Critical Reform

 Republicans and Democrats in the Senate appear to be in substantive talks to amend the decrepit law that governs counting the Electoral College votes. Some of this is just procedural fixes that everyone agrees needs to happen.

The critical difference - and it is critical - is that the Democratic version of the bill would ban state legislatures from overturning the vote count. That has been the single worst vote suppression tactic embraced by Trumpist state legislators in Red states. The idea that the Georgia legislature could overturn the votes of the citizens of Georgia because Trump asks them to would basically be the end of democracy in America. 

Get it done. 

The Gerrymander Problem

 The editors at the WaPo have done a good job explaining why gerrymander are bad and how they occur, even in the face of laws designed to stop them. The most important point is that gerrymanders remove politicians from real accountability at the polls. Given the high levels of partisanship, drawing a solid Red or Blue district means that the real challenge to a legislator comes from their flanks, not the center, during a primary. We saw this when the presumptive next Democratic Speaker of the House was taken out by AOC running to his left. Or when the Republican Majority leader Eric Cantor was taken out by a Tea Party loon.

These partisan gerrymanders give us lunatics like Marjorie Traitor Greene, Lauren Boboert the Clown and Madison Dollar General Tom Brady Cawthorn.

The only solution is a national solution. Democrats have - out of necessity - embraced gerrymandering in NY and Illinois to counteract Republican efforts during the last redistricting cycle. The best solution - independent redistricting councils - are mostly in place in Blue states. California could probably net the Democrats a few more seats if they could gerrymander it, but they have a commission.

Hopefully, there will be a day when we can remedy it, but I guarantee it will not happen under GOP rule.