How Long Will The Shutdown Last?

 I have no idea, because the GOP Caucus is an absolute clown show. However, I think it might not be that long for two reasons.

The first is that Matt Gaetz is a suppurating asshole that even members of his own party despise. It is Gaetz that is leading the Chaos Caucus into extreme positions, as he has shown no desire to work within the deal that was negotiated earlier this year. The basic tripwire at this point seems to be Ukraine aid, which remains popular with the public but unpopular with the MAGAts, so McCarthy can't get a CR passed with Democratic votes as long as he clings to Gaetz and other's refusal to continue aiding our ally against Russia. So, it's going to happen, but the basic unpopularity of the GOP policies is really going to put the squeeze on vulnerable House Republicans who already hate Gaetz and his fellow anarchists.

The second is that shutdowns are unpopular, and especially ones that shutoff things like National Parks. My wife and are a National Parks "completionists" trying to visit every park in the country and we have plans to visit four parks in November. That will be nearly impossible if the shutdown drags on and on. But when people start losing things like Fat Bear Week, there is going to be hell to pay. Seriously. As Mistermix notes above, Trump kept the National Parks open during the last shutdown precisely because closing them is massively unpopular. Biden won't, not just to pressure the House GOP but because the nature of the parks has changed after the pandemic.

I could see the shutdown lasting a week, a day, a fortnight...these are unpredictable, undependable people. It's sad that the voting public needs to be reminded what happens when you elect these clowns, but hopefully they remember next November.

I Need To Get Off "X"

 Twitter (I can't stand to call it X) has been going down the shithole ever since that narcistic tech bro bought it. Still, there are a few good accounts there worth following and no real alternative. 

Nevertheless...

Because Musk has made the place so toxic, you come into contact with a lot more MAGAts than in the past. I suppose there is a certain value in knowing what these maroons are all about, but at the same time it's so very, very depressing.

Your average online MAGAt thinks that there is overwhelming evidence of Hunter and Joe Biden's criminality. Why? Because the House oversight says it does. When the actual committee met yesterday, not a single witness produced such evidence and outside "experts" like Jonathan Turley said there was nothing impeachable in the hearing. If you point this out, they cherry pick or dismiss things. Same goes with the recent summary judgment against Trump on charges of fraud. 

We now have a guilty plea down in Georgia that looks a lot like the defendant in question is going to start cooperating with Fani Willis. Nevertheless, every single conviction in a court of law, where guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt will be discounted and every vague gestural accusation by Comer and Jordan will be treated like the gospel truth.

I can't fucking even.

Here We Go, A Clown Car Over A Cliff

 The Chaos Caucus is prepared to shut down the government. Again. This is one of the most bizarre rituals that Republicans engage in during divided government. This never works to get what they want. It discredits the GOP as a governing party, as if we needed more evidence. They've already negotiated a deal over the budget as part of lifting the debt ceiling. The Senate has passed a continuing resolution that the House could likely pass tomorrow if McCarthy brought it to a vote. 

Josh Marshall argues that the McCarthy/Chaos Caucus dynamic is working as it's designed to. The GOP as a whole is crazy, but having a bunch of glue sniffing morons like Gaetz, Traitof Green and Boobert running around can let McCarthy play the bewildered voice of reason. It's what John Boehner did. I'm not sure I buy that. The margin in the House is so thin that if Gaetz does begin a motion to vacate, McCarthy will need Democrats to keep his Speakership. If that happens, Democrats could simply ask for a CR in return for his gavel.

The other option isn't great either. Democrats withhold their votes to preserve McCarthy's gavel and the House collapses into chaos like we saw when McCarthy took several days to become Speaker back in January. All while the government is shut down.

It's one of those moments that would be "bad" for the country but really bad for the GOP. The question for Democratic strategists is whether they have an obligation to the country to save the Republicans from their own folly.

Committed

 I was reading Josh Marshall's report from the debate last night and this line hit me:

They really seem to have thought that Republicans might abandon Trump (to whom Republican voters have committed so much) without them even saying there was anything wrong with him. That’s a remarkable failure of imagination and personal character.

I've been engaging with MAGAts on "X" about the recent summary judgment against Trump, and they are blind to basic facts. Not spinnable facts but the actual concrete facts. The bit in the parenthesis up there is key: "to whom Republican voters have committed so much." 

Donald Trump is a con artist and a person now convicted of multiple acts of fraud in his business dealings. There are committed Christians out there who think Trump is more religious than Biden, when I defy Trump to relate a single New Testament parable or to name 6 of the 10 commandments. There is no factual basis for the adoration of this serial con artist except that line "to whom Republican voters have committed so much."

Con artists survive because no one wants to admit that they were conned. There are tens of millions of Americans who are being presented with abundant evidence of Trump's criminality and the extent to which he lies to his cultists and rejecting it because loving and defending Trump has become part of their personality. 

What mystifies me is that we have polling "evidence" that millions of Americans who have not committed to Cult 45 are thinking about voting for him. I can understand (if hold in contempt) the idea that someone defends Trump despite the mounting evidence of his criminality because you have been doing it for 6 years. What I can't understand is someone coming fresh to Trump - his chaos, his crime, his incoherence - and saying, "Yup, that's what I want in a president."

How To Report On Trump

 The media's coverage of Joe Biden is pretty appalling, especially when they seem to still treat Trump like he's even a slightly normal political figure. Because of a pathological need for "balance" every story that makes Trump look bad has to be balanced by one that makes Biden look bad. So, we have endless stories about Hunter Biden and Joe's age, because that's what they have to work with, now that inflation is receding. 

Josh Marshall suggests that you simply need to report - with some sense of moral judgment - about Trump's many legal travails and his batshit utterances. In particular he dismisses the urge to "de-platform" Trump, which one of his readers suggests does indeed work.

You can't de-platform the presumptive Republican nominee for president though. The real question is how do you report on Trump's insane utterances without "flooding the zone." The idea of flooding the zone is how Trump does so many egregiously horrible things that it's impossible to properly conceptualize them. The suggestion that Mark Milley is a traitor is so over the top batshit crazy that it should one of those myriad things that would once have ended a politician's career. Trump's ability to overwhelm critical judgment is tough to cover.

I do wonder/hope that if Trump continues to have a steady drumbeat of bad legal news like he had yesterday that it will eventually sink in. Of course, it's appalling that any sentient human could have lived through the chaos and criminality of Trumpistan and wish to return there. For Cult 45 there is no news story that will break his hold on their devotion. The fact - not the opinion, the fact - that it has been proven in a court of law that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll and defrauded people left, right and center has to make a difference, doesn't it?

Doesn't it?

I'm Not Always Right, But...

 ...I am right sometimes.

When the latest indictment against Bob Menendez (D-Scumbag) dropped, the usual instant gratification, "Do SOMETHING" voices on social media immediately lamented that 48 hours after the indictments dropped, there was not a fully unified Democratic Caucus calling for his resignation. The usual "But what about Al Franken" shit was passed around, forgetting that the story around Franken took several weeks to fully resolve.

Anyhoo, I was saying on Twitter that Democrats were not going to get ahead of anything until they had had a pause to think and talk about what to do. It was noteworthy that the New Jersey political machine moved against him first. Then Fetterman called for his resignation.

Today, in a series of perfectly timed statements that creates a cascading effect, we have 18 Democratic Senators (as of 1:40pm) joining Fetterman in calling on Menendez to resign. (No Republicans have called on him to resign. Wonder why.) My guess is that by the end of the day, that number will be close to 40.

Of course, he might not resign anyway. Republicans won't join with Democrats in voting to expel him, as they want to whatabout Menendez's corruption with Trump's. Still, by creating a non-stop release of calls for his resignation, Menendez has to see the walls closing in.

Oh, FFS

 Look, I get that Biden is old and that's going to be an issue surrounding his re-election bid. This bullshit from Axios however is taking a minor issue and making it seem like Biden is an invalid. I'm in my mid-50s and in decent athletic condition for someone my age, and I wear sneakers all the time to avoid foot pain. I do other exercises to stabilize my ankles and improve my balance. It's part of growing older (and wiser).

It wouldn't piss me off so much that they were focusing on Biden's age if it wasn't for the fact that in the past few days, Trump has called for the prosecution for treason of NBC/Comcast and former CJCS Mark Milley. He may also have bought a gun at a gun show in violation of his bond as he awaits trial.

Yeah, yeah, Biden is old. So is Trump. Biden is in better shape mentally and physically than Trump. Oh, and Trump is openly plotting revenge on everyone who opposes him if he wins in 2024.

What is the more important fucking story, you meatheads?

Rob Flaherty

@Rob_Flaherty

The GOP frontrunner: -Called for a political assassination -Called for investigations and fines for media outlets he doesn’t like The President: -Is three years older than him And now for me to take a big sip of coffee and see what the press is more focused on.

7:34 AM · Sep 25, 2023

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210K

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Assault of the Caesars

 This is an interesting piece about today's dictators or dictators-in-waiting, focusing especially on Trump and Boris Johnson (the author is British, so...). He lays out the idea of Caesars as being men whose showmanship is more important than their ideology. Sure, there are some common beliefs among rightist authoritarianism, mostly xenophobia, but they are mostly about power, and their power comes via lies.

I saw an analysis of Christopher Rufo, the slimy ideologue attacking whatever a school might teach aside from the Three Rs. He was the "mastermind" behind the attacks on CRT (which were bullshit, as CRT is a specific thing) and even SEL (social emotional learning). I couldn't understand the attack on SEL, aside from the fact that the Right needs bullies, but his own words explained his agenda: destroy the institutions starting with schools. If he can sow distrust of all public education, he can begin to erode faith in every other institution.

During the Trump years, one mantra among anti-Trump organizers was "Your institutions won't save you." But the thing is, they did save us. The Courts smacked down his efforts to overturn the election. The military refused to accede to his plans. The Congress held him accountable via impeachment (though not conviction, which fell victim to partisanship). If we are lucky, the courts will hold him accountable this spring and he will finally go to jail. 

Trumpism understands this; Rufo understands this; the Caesars understand this. The institutions of liberal democracy do, in fact, restrain authoritarian impulse, so those institutions must first be destroyed. American media is pretty bad, but that's not enough, the idea of objective truth has to be destroyed. There are problems with American schools, but that's not enough, they must be eliminated. American elections have all sorts of issues, but that's not enough, the very idea of electoral results must be called into question. This is as true of Ron DeSantis as it is of Donald Trump, even if he pioneered the latest round of attacks on American institutions.

History does not predict the future, but history does suggest that liberal democracy does have some robust anti-bodies against those who would destroy it. It is constantly doubted and assaulted - from the left and the right - yet as Churchill quipped, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." 

I remain hopeful that Americans will not return the architect of January 6th to the White House, but if they do, I fear it will lead to the dissolution of the country.

Trauma Nation

 I've been saying that we have never really gotten over the trauma of Covid. This piece really lays it all out. Please read it, as it's better than any superficial analysis I could offer.

A taste:    

These recent large-scale hurts magnify one another because they are so tightly grouped together; they are especially deep because we have come to understand every single one of them as a betrayal: It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The government was supposed to work. The planet shouldn’t turn on us. We are a democracy with an orderly and peaceful transition of power. Children should not be shot at school.

Admittedly, these promises have only spotty integrity over the centuries (some of them were never really true). Today, they are all being broken simultaneously. As we experience betrayals again and again, the breaches of trust become both more impersonal and less coherent. There is no one person to blame, but we also can’t write off our tragedy to a twist of fate. What we have been through couldn’t have happened to just anyone. We cannot exactly follow the chain of causation to a single intelligible event, and yet there is nothing about our experience that’s an accident.

Biden's Presidential Style

 This article is really important and not a little "boring." It's about Biden administration efforts to reduce the burden of applying for federal programs that people are eligible for. There are a number of good examples, but I'll pluck out one: Someone who has years of medical documentation of their disability, but Social Security requires them to go to a specific doctor who turned them down after a five minute exam. 

I can speak a bit to this, as I have a CDL to drive school buses at work. The state requires that I get a physical every year to prove that I'm healthy enough to drive. They will not, however, accept the physical that I get every year from a doctor who knows my health history. Instead I go to an overworked urgent care facility and get run through a bullshit set of tests. It's not a ton of work, but it takes a couple of hours every year to do this and that couple of hours is pretty unpleasant. And I'll have to do it again next year.  And the year after that. 

That - as the article notes - is a time tax. I'm actually well-positioned to pay that time tax, because I can do the physical exam in August before school starts, but what if I had a 9-5 job that docked my pay while I waited to get my exam? These little burdens add up. My wife is trying to use frequent flier miles to bring our youngest home for Thanksgiving and the process is so unpleasant, precisely to keep you from access the benefit. This was part of the Reagan movement to eliminate "fraud" by simply making it harder and harder to access benefits. Add enough red tape, hide the benefits and you eliminate the support legislated for the poor.

What does this have to do with Biden? This initiative came from the White House and was likely a combination of advocacy groups and Biden's long experience in government. Once started, however, it's not like the White House and certainly not Biden himself is going over forms and procedures. Presidents do not micromanage, they should not micromanage. Biden's age is going to be the biggest issue in 2024 as inflation recedes. However, you don't have to be a president who puts in 20 hour days six days a week. You have to a president who says, "Do this" and then provides the support to do that. 

Biden's an old fashioned guy and he's running an old fashioned presidency. He's "doing the work" in ways that make government better. He's not good at rousing speeches. He's not "dominating the news cycle". He's not picking needless fights. But programs like this are exactly what the country needs more of. It is however a tough message to campaign on. I'll certainly grant that.

Patience

 The usual "DO SOMETHING" caucus is dismayed that no one is going to force Robert Menendez to resign. The inevitable comparisons to Al Franken are already circulating. Right now, New Jersey Democrats have called on him to resign, because regardless of his guilt, it's in their interest to do so. John Fetterman is the only Senator to call for his resignation so far.

It's the weekend.

Schumer's call for "due process and a fair trial" is bullshit, because serving in the Senate is a privilege not a right and Menendez has abused that privilege. Schumer is correct, however, in waiting to talk to the rest of his caucus. The optics of letting Menendez serve while prosecuting Trump is a windfall for Republican whataboutism. Yes, Menendez has every right to "due process and a fair trial" but he has that right after stepping down from his post.

Ideally, the Democratic caucus meets and votes to move against him. Menendez's presence in the Senate for another week or even two is irrelevant. What is important is that it happen, not that it happens in "Internet Time".

Terminal Senate Brain

 Chuck Schumer's decision not to force Robert Menendez out of the Senate is more than lamentable, it's strategic malpractice. New Jersey has a Democratic governor and Menendez's replacement will be a Democrat. While Schumer is correct that Menendez deserves a fair trial, he does not "deserve" a Senate seat. That belongs to the people of New Jersey. 

The defining issue of the 2024 election (aside from abortion) is the manifest corruption and un-fitness for office of Donald Trump. Allowing a hopelessly corrupt person who's barely a replacement level Senator and might be a traitor to hang around is a great example of terminal Senate brain. 

It's not an Old Boy's Club. Get rid of him.

Buh Bye

 So, Bob Menendez - who has always been a corrupt fucker - has finally been indicted for being a corrupt fucker.

Just to keep track, Biden's "politicized" Justice Department had indicted a Democratic Senator and his own son. Explain how the hell people who think that the DOJ has been turned into Biden's version of what Trump actually wanted to do with it can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Jon Chait put it well:

The reality staring Republicans in the face is that Biden is at least making a good-faith effort to respect the Justice Department’s independence. And he is doing it in just about the most painful possible circumstance — at the expense of a son whose drug addiction led him into a series of incidental criminal offenses. Their party’s leader makes no pretense of respecting judicial independence and is instead promising to reduce the Department of Justice into a Putin-esque tool of nakedly biased partisanship.

The only possible way Republicans can justify such a grave step is to tell themselves the other side is just as bad. The belief is simply too necessary to be abandoned in the face of evidence.

I'm Concerned About India

 Canada has accused India of being behind the killing of a Sikh nationalist with Canadian citizenship. India has responded by suspending visas for Canadians and expelling Canadian diplomats.

As this thread illustrates, there is something of a disconnect in how India sees itself as being seen in the world and how it is actually being seen in the world. It's perception of other people's perception is wrong. Indians believe that everyone thinks India (or Bharat) is really important, when few people think of India at all. (They are likely too busy thinking of the Roman Empire.) I know for my part, I taught AP Comparative Government and we did not teach India. Once we dropped the AP designation, I added India, because I think it's going to be an important country in the next century.

And that's what has me worried. India/Bharat is the most populous country in the world, and it is also one of the most diverse. What we have seen recently is the rise of Hindu nationalism that is redefining who is "really Indian" in a way that also necessitates a more belligerent foreign policy. 

The US has been working diligently to build bridges to India/Bharat as a counterweight to China, but even so India has not been eager to completely sever its longstanding ties to Russia. 

Indian democracy is mess. It shouldn't work (and sometimes it doesn't). Chaos is the avenue for demagogues and dictators to seize power. Given the sort of arch-nationalism that we are seeing from India/Bharat, I worry that we have a nuclear armed nation that thinks it's more important than it is, and when it's not treated as that important will get increasingly belligerent. 

The Problem With Peace

 I'm reading an excellent book, The Ghost at the Feast, about American foreign policy from 1898-1941. This was a period when the United States emerged as the world's most powerful nation, yet could not bring itself to actually involve itself with the rest of the world except when forced to. When they did interact with the rest of the world, annexing the Philippines or joining World War I, they found the experience unsatisfactory and so retreated behind their oceans and scolded the rest of the world for asking that the be involved. If we are coming up with a short list of people responsible for the rise of Hitler and the coming of World War II, isolationist Senator William Borah would have to be near the top of the list.

In place of engaging meaningfully with entities like the League of Nation, America wrote a bunch of nonsense on paper and relied on that instead. They crafted naval arms control treaties with no real enforcement mechanisms; they crafted another treaty to outlaw war; most notably, they wrote restrictive Neutrality Acts that inhibited Franklin Roosevelt from aiding anti-fascist forces in Europe and Asia. Outright pacifism combined with isolationism to remove America from the world precisely as the fragile "liberal democratic" world order that had been fragilely put into place in 1919 fell apart.

The fundamental problem with this pacifist-isolationist movement was that it presumed that any nation can control the actions of another nation simply by wanting it to be so. 

All of this is context for Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speeched at the UN yesterday. Russia has engaged in war crimes from day one of the war until today. They strike civilian targets at will and at random. Hell, yesterday they blew up a warehouse of humanitarian aid from the Vatican. This war is entirely a war of Russia's making, despite some egregious spin from Kremlin apologists. Ukrainian existence as an independent state is quit literally the issue at play here. As Biden noted at the UN, the entire point of that organization is to prevent one state from erasing another - to prevent aggressive wars of conquest. (I realize that America's invasion of Iraq can very easily be included in that category, which is one of the many reasons it was wrong.)

Ukraine's counteroffensive is proceeding cautiously but steadily. As they are unable to draw on the same population numbers that Russia is, Ukraine must be very careful with casualties. This is true in general of democracies; authoritarian regimes tend to wage war in a way that is cavalier with the lives of its soldiery. They have made important gains despite the limitations that NATO has imposed on the weaponry we share with them. While we have been the arsenal of their defense, we have also denied them F-16s and ATACMs that might allow them to exploit the holes that they have punched in Russian defenses. 

Soon, Zelensky will speak before Congress, which includes a House Republican majority that is about to shut down the government, because they are incapable of actually governing. This combines with the outright pro-Russian faction within the GOP. 

Some of the rhetoric you hear online is "Why are we spending money in Ukraine when we have needs here at home?" First, the GOP House will not meet those needs here at home, so just stop it. Second, we have an immense defense budget for a reason. We learned the lesson of 1919-1941; America must lead the democratic world or World War III could erupt. In fact, American and European support of Ukraine is a proxy World War III.

Putin's attack on Ukraine in 2014 was not dissimilar to Hitler's re-annexation of the Rhineland. His attack in 2021 was reminiscent of Hitler's assault on Czechoslovakia. In 1938, a nervous Britain - abandoned by America - agreed to sacrifice Czechoslovakia, thinking that Hitler would stop there. Six years later, Europe lay in ruins.

America's defense begins in Ukraine, who are fighting and dying to preserve democracy not only in their country but in all of Eastern Europe.

Keep that in mind when sex pests like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert lead the charge to cut off aid to Ukraine.

Ken Paxton

 I've been meaning write about the acquittal of the blatantly corrupt Texas Attorney General by the GOP Texas Senate, but really it's just sadly predictable. After large bipartisan majorities of the Texas House impeached him, Steve Bannon and other Trumpist figures rallied to his side and threatened primaries to anyone voting to convict. Given the Deplorable state of the GOP electorate, that's a legitimate threat. 

Until we can get a better class of GOP voter, we will never have a better class of GOP representative.

Trump And Dobbs

 Jon Chait analyzes Trump's soft-peddling of abortion bans, Some of this is because Trump does have one talent, and that's discerning subrosa feelings in the public. He does get certain vibes and reflects them back to his audience, and the vibes on Dobbs are pretty bad for the GOP, and one reason why I simply do not believe the current polling showing a dead heat between Trump and Biden. With DeSantis taking an even more extreme (albeit hidden) position on abortion bans, Trump can claim to be more moderate on the issue. As someone who has no doubt paid for multiple abortions, it's understandable that he might moderate his position.

There are a bunch of other observations that give credit to Trump for strategically pivoting to the center, but I think that gives him too much credit. He's fundamentally impulsive based on his ample gut and his gut says Dobbs is unpopular. Of course, he has to say that the reason Republicans are underperforming is Dobbs and not his seditious insurrection.

One thing that would worry me is that you can really feel how much the national press wants a new story. They are stuck with Biden v Trump again, so they are floating all sorts of nonsense about Biden or Harris stepping down (not so much about Trump stepping aside in the face of 91 indictments, because lulz). They would love to talk about how Trump is actually a moderate on abortion rights, when he's not. The reason Dobbs happened was because of Trump and McConnell. He may regret it now, but this is his baby (pun intended).

What's more, Trump is fundamentally dishonest and lacks convictions beyond the idea that Trump is the best and everyone loves him but the haters. If he does get re-elected, he will absolutely sign any abortion bans that come his way. And he could do so, because if he gets re-elected, the Republicans will set about doing to America what they have done to Wisconsin: creating gerrymanders and electoral rules that thwart popular will.

One thing that will almost certainly not happen is the press holding him accountable for Dobbs. They crave a new story, and this qualifies. 

Democrats cannot passively assume that independent women will vote for them because of Dobbs; they had to remind them constantly to do so. They have to hang this millstone around the GOP's neck in every election in every state.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall makes the same point: you cannot rely on the media to report accurately on this. 

Chef's Kiss

 Alexandra Petri, y'all.

Iranian Hostage Non-crisis

 The Biden Administration has negotiated the release of five Americans held in Evin prison in return for releasing funds held by South Korea in compliance with US sanctions. If you really want to know what happened, I would read this interview with Brett McGurk by Jason Rezaian, who was himself held for over a year in Evin.

First, diplomacy is complex and nuanced. One state rarely has the ability to truly and completely influence another. There are levers that can be pulled, but each state's sovereignty inoculates them from control by the other. In this case, the Biden Administration has prioritized bringing home as many Americans as they can. According to McGurk, the funds released are limited in what Iran can do with them, but Iran says differently. Time will tell.

What I can say, confidently, is that the Right Wing Wurlitzer will have a complete and utter freakout over this. Almost all of it will be hypocritical bullshit. McGurk noted how often similar actions were taken under Trump, but of course, accusations of hypocrisy have never daunted the GOP and their minions in the media. 

There is only one real criticism of this move and that is that it does reward hostage taking. That is undeniably true. The question is whether Iran will use this deal to take more hostages. If they do - or really if any regime does - then the policy was a failure. If not, STFU, Biden brought Americans home. However, he brought Americans home from Afghanistan and people dinged him for that.

Americans are, by and large, ignorant of the world beyond American borders. We saw the problem with this during our disastrous invasion of Iraq, when even American officials had no clue what they are doing. Still, being ignorant is hardly a barrier to have an opinion, so I would expect there to be some misplaced outrage over this action.  Sadly. I mean, it may not work, but that seems premature.

UAW

 I'm not usually a fan of Erik Loomis' takes, but he lands on something interesting here. Loomis is a labor historian and pretty far to the left, but even he notes that it's not simply pocketbook issues that drive votes. The piece he links to includes - wait for it - a Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump voter. How do you vote for Clinton in 2016 and vote for Trump in 2020? How is that possible? 

Some of it is what many commentators have noted about a certain cultural leftness in the Democratic Party that completely alienates these folks. I think James Carville termed it "Faculty Lounge Politics." Obsessing about the use of Latinx or pronouns. I'm very skeptical that the sort of theory that by changing words we can change attitudes, because changing the words typically creates a challenging set of conditions for people who don't get what you're trying to do. 

The Politico piece that Loomis links to includes a few autoworkers going after Biden on his age. There's also the standard "they all suck" position. Look, if you think Biden in non compos mentis, then how the hell do you listen to Trump for more than 15 seconds and not arrive at the same conclusion? And "they all suck" suggests that you're not interested in looking at policy outcomes, you're just angry. And Loomis, to his credit, does not try and force the discussion back into the sort of "Democrats are just as bad as Republicans" box that many on the left try to do.

The sort of soft Marxist idea that everything is about economics founders on the reality that most people vote their vibes. Of course, Loomis goes on to say that the Democratic party hasn't really been on the autoworkers' side for a long time. The main targets of ire of Democrats selling out the laboring class are Clinton and Obama. What's ironic is that real wages did rise during Clinton's presidency and Obama saved the auto industry with a bailout. However, the inequality that we see in America does mean that too much of the rewards in our system go to the very top. That isn't a Democratic problem - if anything they are the only ones talking about it. But as Loomis notes, the Republicans offer a different narrative of why they are falling behind: immigrants, drag queens, whatever.

The unanswered question is whether Biden standing up for the UAW strike would even matter. There isn't anything that can be done legislatively, and legislation is required to unfuck the NLRB. Even if Biden offers as much rhetorical support as possible, it won't make up for the vibes. It won't make up for the culture war stuff. 

The ironic part is that Biden is not a faculty lounge politics guy. He's not out there excoriating people for using the wrong pronouns; he's the most openly pro-labor president we've had in decades. Still once your poisoned with Fox News bullshit, it's hard to see the reality of the situation. Not when you have your vibes to fall back on.

Mitt Romney and Lauren Boebert

 Mitt Romney has decided not to lose to a MAGA primary challenger, so he's retiring at the end of his term. On the way out the door, he's decided to speak to McKay Coppins, who's sort of the Isaac Chotiner of Right Wing media: people just seem to admit stuff to him that they don't admit to others.

Anyhoo, Romney has dished about the abject cowardice and cynicism of his Republican colleagues. He asserts (somewhat tenuously) that people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are among the smartest people in the Senate (really?) yet they pretend to be MAGAt mouth breathers, because that's where the juice is. He also dished that Angus King reached out to Romney to warn about January 6th, Romney reached out to McConnell and McConnell never got back to him. Interesting that King was hearing about the insurrection and the threats against Romney's life and did the right thing and McConnell did nothing.

None of this is "surprising" in the sense that we all know that Republicans were absolutely complicit in their silence before and after January 6th, but the fact that one of them kept the receipts is interesting, I guess. Nor will it make a dent in the MAGAt delusions about what happened surrounding Trump's entire behavior from election day onwards. There is no longer an institutional party to rein these lunatic in.

In fact, Romney also notes that many Republican members of Congress admitted that Trump should be impeached and convicted, but they worried about threats of violence from Trump supporters and caved into this terrorism...and still haven't done shit to curb the terrorists within their own camp. Plus, I'm sure these yegs have an arsenal of Freedumb Guns in their home for personal defense, but a few scary letters and they abandon their constitutional duty.

Regardless, Romney's perspective is a slightly new one, I guess, though I'm not sure how much new information we will get, rather than corroborating evidence. Still, his decision to break the omerta that governs the GOP has burnished his reputation some (even as he engages in some classic bothsides by criticizing Biden for...stuff). Most astonishingly, there have been people making the argument that Democrats should have let Romney win in 2012, because Romney's defeat led to Trump four years later. 

The Party of Personal Responsibility folks.

Still, when compared to the feral lunacy of Trumpism, Romney does come off better. George Bush was probably the worst president of my lifetime until Trump and even he came off better. Doesn't make him good, but being an idiot is better than being a sociopathic authoritarian.

So, Romney's out. He was about as decent as person as you could expect from the post-Gingrich GOP. His efforts on child poverty were really interesting and effective, though they sadly lapsed recently. So who remains in the Grand Old Party?

Lauren Boebert. She was recently kicked out of a Denver theater for vaping next to a pregnant woman, being loud AF and groping and being groped by her date. She then flips off the usher as she walks out of the lobby. Classy!

Boebert is neither smart, nor educated, nor principled. She is one of the worst people you are likely to meet, and she will almost certainly survive a primary challenge and would have to be a slight favorite to win reelection, despite her close call last year. This is a person who has no business being in Congress. Hell she has no business being on a town council.  Even Marjorie Traitor Greene has had enough of her shit. She is Matt Gaetz: a vapid sex pest who hasn't an original thought in their wee head. 

Yet, Republicans will still vote for her.

When Romney made a bothsides comment about Joe Biden, it reminds me of statement by people like Bill Barr, who excoriate Trump for trying to overthrow the electoral legitimacy of American democracy. Barr basically ripped him, but said he would vote for him anyway.

Trump - and people like Boebert - represent a clear and present danger to American democracy. Some Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger understand this essential fact. Romney, for all his purported decency, can't seem to make that final leap. This is the malignancy of the Never-Never-Trumpers who don't like Trump, but petulantly refuse to stand against him because Joe Biden is a communist or something.

So, Mitt, nice tea your spilling. But until you actually step up and work against Trump and fools like Lauren Boebert, fuck you. In all seriousness, fuck you.

Patience, Grasshopper

 For some reason, I recall a certain liberal outrage during the actual events of January 6th that went something like this: "The Capitol Police are in on it, they would be shooting Black people right now, All Cops Are Bastards." Remember that? I do.

Anyway, from over a month ago we have had over 110 convictions, including ring leaders like Tarrio and Rhodes, we've had over 630 guilty pleas and there are a few hundred more cases pending. They are still looking for people and making arrests, too.

Was this "satisfying" to some people? I think they are happy when clear seditious scumbags like Tarrio and Rhodes are sentenced, but this is the reality of an actual functioning justice system. It's slow. Results take time.

Anyway, the same is true of the impact of legislation. Look at ACA. Unpopular, because no one knew what was in it, until they started getting insurance as well as the other myriad benefits. Now, it's quite popular to the point where three GOP Senators couldn't bring themselves to ashcan it. 

As I posted last night, Democrats and anyone to the left of Mitt Romney need to sack up and get with the program. Joe Biden is going to run against Donald Trump. That's your choice. A fundamentally decent human being who has accomplished a remarkable amount as president versus an avowed wannabe dictator.

Stop wishing for the immediate gratification and do the work of making things pay off over the long run.

Wisconsin

 The state GOP in Wisconsin has gerrymandered the living shit out of their state, and as a result they have insulated themselves from electoral accountability. That doesn't mean they won't still find a way to screw around with the elections that do happen, like firing the state's election chief for no reason or impeaching the liberal judge who - having been recently elected - holds the key to keep Wisconsin even marginally a democratic, much less a Democratic, state.

The brazen authoritarianism of the Wisconsin GOP is what we could expect from a second Trump administration - especially if paired with a GOP Congress. Elections might occur, but they won't mean shit.

Please Read This

 Josh Marshall lays some wisdom:

You getting all angsty about Biden’s age and worrying about it and coming back to it – you’re the problem. You need to grow up. I mean this not in an intemperate or judgmental spirit but in one of kindness and compassion. But seriously, you need to grow up.

A lot of Democrats are demoralized in significant measure because Biden’s approval numbers are stuck in the low 40s. You know a really big reason he’s stuck in the low 40s? Because a sizable fraction of Democrats are anti-Trump and scared of Trump and just not feeling that Biden is being the non-Trump well enough. There’s a significant amount of Democratic disapproval of Biden over that, and thus a big notch of overall disapproval for the same reason.

Hobbes Again

 Yglesias examines the concept of "Broken Windows" policing: where it came from and what it really means. It's one of his "good" pieces where examining progressive shibboleths is probably warranted. 

The one concept he doesn't mention is the idea of legitimacy, especially as it relates to Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was the 17th century philosopher who argued that a state/monarch must preserve order to the state/monarch was no longer legitimate. Order, argued Hobbes, precedes everything. Some of that trickled down to Madison and others at the Constitutional Convention, when they considered widespread unrest in the years preceding 1787. 

The "Broken Windows" theory originated in an experiment in 1969. I'll just quote at length:

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by “vandals” within ten minutes of its “abandonment.” The first to arrive were a family—father, mother, and young son—who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began—windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult “vandals” were well-dressed, apparently clean-cut whites. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the “vandals” appeared to be primarily respectable whites.

What's interesting about this is that it is not linked to race, which belies that the roots of Broken Windows is racial control. What it links to is a sense that in this space, rules no longer apply. Once the window was smashed in Palo Alto, the same thing happened as happened in the Bronx. 

It's the thinness of "rules" that matters. Rules are internalized when they are legitimate. An illegitimate rule simply isn't followed - we had that issue with the dress code at our school, few students felt it legitimate to police clothing. Even if a rule IS legitimate - don't vandalize shit - once the rule rolls back with Zimbardo breaking the window, the rule evaporates.

All of this recalls Hobbes' assertion that life in a state of nature (without enforced rules) is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Without a policing mechanism, rules can erode, which corrodes basic ideas of community and shared civic life. I see it in my MAGA-town among Whites terrified of people driving down their streets, because car thefts have risen. You see it in the horrific spate of people being shot and killed for knocking on the wrong door or pulling into the wrong driveway.

Property crimes are directly tied to poverty and the poor do not live in an economic system that is legitimate in their eyes. Addressing poverty would obviously help restore some sense of legitimacy to laws. The fewer criminals there are, the fewer crimes there are, the more legitimate laws become (this offer does not apply completely to low grade sociopaths).

Simply addressing poverty, however, is likely insufficient. There has to be a cohesive policy package that increases police effectiveness in stopping crime, while creating community resiliency for times when crimes do happen.

A clear example of this is a post-Covid/post-George Floyd reluctance of police to really go after traffic violations. Sunday night, we were passed by two cars that were racing in speeds likely in excess of 100 mph. I understand the argument that if police were to give chase that only increases the number of cars going 100 mph, but allowing a certain lawlessness (I'm not talking about rolling stops or illegal right-on-red at 1:00am) creates more lawlessness, because the rules no longer apply.

My hope is that - for obvious political reasons - the leadership we need on this issue arises from Black civic leaders, because the racial overtones of Broken Window Policing under Rudy Giuliani have made aspects of strict enforcement intolerable in Black neighborhoods. I'm just not sure the proper lens is being applied.

For progressive politics to work, people have to feel secure enough in their person and homes to extend generosity to the broader community. That was what Hobbes' idea ultimately leads to. I'm not sure that's been internalized by progressive thinkers.

I Do Not Care About Republicans Impeaching Biden

 It's a bigger sham than impeaching Clinton, as Clinton had some culpability and dishonesty - albeit not rising to level of impeachable offenses. The GOP's current position is that "Of course Biden should be impeached the evidence is well known and overwhelming" without having any real evidence. I should note that whatever Hunter Biden is accused of - beyond trading on his family name - Jared Kushner actually did. Repeatedly. 

As Jon Chait notes, this is pure revenge looking for an offense. Trump was impeached, so Biden must be impeached.

It will be interesting to see if they actually get the votes to impeach or whether there are still ten or eleven sane Republicans in the House.

Church Of The Savvy

 During the Bush Years, someone coined the term "Church of the Savvy" to describe the political press. Basically, the DC press corpse understands things, don't your see. The simple rubes who populate the country aren't privy to this secret understanding. Two examples.

The first is Josh Marshall's takedown of Josh Kraushaar at Axios. There are a bunch of simplistic assumptions that Kraushaar embeds in his piece because that's what savvy people do. They know that Biden is too old to beat Trump, because they know that Biden is too old to beat Trump. The reality is that the DC press corpse is very bored with a Biden-Trump rematch, because no one really likes formulaic sequels.

Yglesias does something a bit different today. He takes all of his priors about how policy is how voters make up their minds to illustrate that...well, actually, it's a bit hard to figure our exactly what he's saying. Messaging matters, but only if it's linked to policy? This seems to be his thesis:

The point is, structural circumstances matter a lot.

But I think current conventional wisdom has come to be too dominated by a style of political science fatalism that overcorrects into a kind of LOL nothing matters view of the world.

He uses some historical examples, but largely strips them of those structural circumstances. He continues to flog the Big Lie that Trump was some moderate and then caved to the conservative wing of the party. Trump knew that cutting elderly entitlements was politically toxic, but he was still a conservative cipher for tax cuts and reactionary judges. He was a culture warrior through and through, because that's what filled his rallies and stroked his ego. He then manages to talk about 2016 without mentioning the persistent undercurrent of misogyny, the ridiculous email coverage or the fact that Clinton won by several million votes that were simply in the wrong states. 

He makes some vague noises about Biden moving to the left, but Biden's whole thing is moderation and closet bipartisanship - a feature that Yglesias writes a lot about. 

The title of the piece - Polarization is a Choice - suffers from fatal passive voice. Who's choosing that? If Biden passed some fairly leftwing legislation in 2021-2, he did so because he understands that most presidents get one bite of the apple...because of polarization. 

Biden's record is not perfect, but it's pretty damned impressive. He has not embraced open borders or defund the police. He has embraced some aspects of student debt relief, but that's just constituent service. Everything else has been exactly as left wing as Joe Manchin will allow it to be.

People vote their vibes. Not everyone. People like Yglesias (or me) who follow politics closely assume that people are making deep ideological choices. That's not exactly true.

People who do make ideological choices have already made their choice. That's baked in. The so-called undecided voters are largely disengaged (though they fancy themselves well-informed and free-thinking) who swing back and forth based on vibes. 

It is frustrating as hell that people are looking at the choice in 2024 - the outright authoritarian, under 91 indictments who has vowed publicly to end democracy in this country versus a grandpa who has seen a bit too much inflation caused by global events - and thinks that there are merits to both sides. If you are in that head space, you are not making a decision based on reasoned policy positions. 

That's a stupid argument, not a savvy one.

Enduring Bullshit

 One of the central lies that circulates around Donald Trump (that Trump himself doesn't really spout) is that Donald Trump is an economic populist. This is complete and utter bullshit.

Trump understands what his rally-goers/cultists want and they sure as hell don't want cuts to Social Security and Medicare. That single insight into pandering has led credulous idiots in the press (and even in some leftists circles) to believe that Trump is somehow a consul for the forgotten little guy.

As Jon Chait points out, Trump's main economic plan then and now is a regressive tax cut. If - Dog forbid - Trump got elected and instituted his deficit fueled tax cuts, the current environment would crater the American economy. Trump only cares about himself and he would benefit from a tax cut, so...

The NFL Is Back

 It is now time to let 65 some men almost a 1,000 miles away ruin my Sundays all fall.

Party Identification

 When looking at polls that show Biden and Trump tied, it's helpful to look at how pollsters are sampling the population. For instance a poll that has Biden losing Michigan, but samples the Black population at 7% when they make up 14% of the population of Michigan is a questionable poll. 

One thing that's especially tricky these days is simply getting people to answer the phone. Young people, in particular, do not answer the phone from people they don't know. This also makes sampling tricky, because you have to extrapolate out from the 15 Black people under 65 who answered the phone to cover all of Michigan's Black population.

What bears watching, however, is partisan breakdown in the polls. The new CNN poll that shows a dead heat between Biden and Trump has partisan samples as 32% Democrat, 32% Republican and 35% Independent. The number of "Democrats," "Republicans," and "Independents" depends on self-reporting. I don't have CNN's self-reporting data on that, but I have Gallup's. Their most recent sample has this breakdown: D-26; R-25, I-47. Looking over the past two years, we can see that Independents typically come in around 40%, give or take, with Republicans and Democrats largely split in the mid-20s to 30. 

Keep this in mind, when we see polling that shows Trump tied or winning for a few reasons. One is that Independents, unlike Republicans, are legitimately concerned about January 6th and Trump's criminal cases. After January 6th, we saw roughly Republican self-identification drop 5%, from around 30 to around 25, for obvious reasons. We are expected to believe that subsequent events - including Dobbs and Trump's cavalcade of indictments has led that 5% to return to the GOP. I have my doubts.

As we have seen in every actual election since Dobbs, Democrats have done about 5% better than the polls suggest. The implication to me is that either polls are just missing younger voters who are showing up to protect reproductive freedom or they are oversampling Republicans in order to avoid the polling failures of 2016 and 2020. They clearly missed the Blue Wave of 2018 and misread a Red Wave of 2022 (which wouldn't have even happened if it wasn't for the ineptitude of the NY Democratic Party). 

So leaving aside the fact that Biden's numbers are roughly where Obama, Dubya and Clinton's were a year before they were re-elected, leaving aside the fact that Republican voters are older and therefore more likely to have died since 2020, and leaving aside that incumbents usually get re-elected and Trump is uniquely unpopular, there could be a sampling problem if pollsters assume that there are the same number of Republicans now as there used to be.

UPDATE: Check out this tweet from Liz Cheney.

Trump and the XIVth Amendment

 Josh Marshall started musing on whether we could really use the XIVth Amendment to bar Trump from running for office. Some readers thought yes, other thought no. I have not read the very, very lengthy list of things Trump has been indicted for, but I don't think he's been indicted for inciting an insurrection. If not, then even a conviction might not create the clear standard for barring him from even running again.

Then there's the question of whether barring Trump from running would unleash violence. On that, I'm pretty clear: We cannot consider ourselves a nation of laws if we fail to enforce them because angry White people might get violent. The post above references the Malheur occupation, and frankly, they should have treated those people as the domestic terrorists that they are. 

Will Trump cultists get violent? It's absolutely possible. Most of them, however, have a fair amount to lose - as the January 6th defendants are discovering. The violence will come from the true lunatic fringe, and while it will be cheered on from social media and on NewsMax, I think we are talking militants in the hundreds, certainly not the tens of thousands. 

One of the hallmarks of Trumpism is high visibility signs and social media posts. It's easy to overestimate how many members of the true Cult 45 exist and many of them are a 5K fun run away from a coronary embolism. 

Tactically, I still think - despite some polling which looks to be bullshit - that Trump represents the easiest opponent for Joe Biden in 2024, in the sense that Biden already whupped him once, January 6th happened and Dobbs happened. The latter two are things Trump did, and should lead Democrats and Independents home. Age is clearly an issue with Biden, but Trump is almost as old and in worse health. So, I'm not exactly in favor of Trump being barred from the ballot entirely, unless it leads to DeSantis getting nominated, because that guy oozes assholery. 

So, the nominee will be Trump, unless he's in jail. And even then...

Murc's Law

 Murc's Law states that Democrats - and Democrats alone - have control over political events in America. What this means is that every time something bad happens, it's inevitably Democrat's fault. The invasion of Iraq, somehow, becomes Democrats fault, because reasons.

Jon Chait points out a telling example from a leftist author, Samuel Moyn. Moyn basically blames Democrats for Donald Trump. There is the Leninist impulse of "heightening the contradictions" that suggests that things need to get worse in order to prompt the necessary Marxist revolution. In Moyn's telling (at least according to Chait, I'll be damned if I'm reading the book), "Cold War liberals" abandoned efforts to bring about a more egalitarian society because they irrationally feared communism.

First, it was not irrational to fear communism. The Soviet Union sucked. Hard. The waving away of Stalinist atrocities is either historically illiterate or blatantly dishonest. I actually knew a communist from that time period, and he would growl, "In the 1930s you were either a fascist trying to conquer the world or a communist trying to save it." What about Stalin, we asked. "That son of a bitch..." and he would trail off in anger. 

The fundamental problem with communism is that it requires a powerful, unchecked, coercive state to create equality. Equality is great! The measures taken to get there are almost always bad, including collectivized agriculture, which might be the worst idea in human history, with a body count that rivals the last century's wars. All of those problems are waved away by contemporary Marxists.

What Chait focuses on, is the application of Murc's Law. Moyn notes that there have been notable failures of liberalism since 1945. True! However, he fails to note that there is an entire political party that has the loyalty of at least 45% of the electorate that is dedicated to rolling back the tide of liberalism.

What's more, I think we can safely assume that Moyn does not care about the broad basket of concerns known as "social issues." If he did, I'm sure Moyn would point out that Dobbs was actually the Democrats' fault for "letting it happen" as if there were not a multi-decades project to overturn Roe. Additionally, the most prominent advancement in equality in American since 1945 was the civil rights revolution that not only freed Black from the worst abuses of Jim Crow, but led to Second Wave Feminism, the American Indian Movement and LGBTQ rights. This was actively pursued by Democrats. 

The counter-reaction to the Great Society is the basic story of American politics since 1965. From 1932-1968, liberalism was ascendant and dominated American politics. Even Eisenhower had elements of his presidency that could be construed as a continuation of New Deal policies. After the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the White South broke with the Democratic Party, as did many working class Whites in the North - Reagan Democrats. What followed was the Reagan Revolution that made America fundamentally less equal and concentrated wealth at the top. For Moyn, Reagan's actions are Democrat's fault.

As Matthew Yglesias noted yesterday, White Working Class resentment over the immigration issue isn't exactly about economics. Hispanic workers are not taking factory jobs, because there are no factory jobs to take. The "neoliberal" trade regime that prioritized share holder returns by outsourcing labor costs to places like Mexico and China was, indeed, promulgated by some Democrats like Bill Clinton. But it was driven by Republicans, and every effort by Democrats to claw back some of that industry is met with tooth and nail resistance from Republicans. 

No, the resentment over immigration, which was a large driver in Trump's victory, is mostly cultural. It's about the perception that the southern border is porous (which isn't exactly true, Republicans actually complain about how many people are caught at the border), and that America is losing its identity to a flood of foreigners. The fact that the jobs are already gone just makes it worse.

There have been two major policy achievements passed by Democrats this century: the Affordable Care Act and the economic and climate legislation passed by Biden. All of this has made America a little more equal, though there is still a mountain of work to be done. The fact that Republicans have spent every year since the ACA was passed trying to get rid of it, the fact that Republicans have erased a woman's autonomy over her own body, the fact that wealthy Republicans have signaled that they are OK with Trump's efforts to end American democracy, all of this is just Democrats' fault.

In the end, most leftist political messaging, policies and advice are unhelpful if not actively bad to win elections in America. Democrats have a potent potential message for 2024 surrounding a Republican party that is actively hostile to women and voting rights. In other words, Democrats can seize the mantle of being the party of freedom AND equality.

But if, by 2028, America is not a utopia, then that will be Democrats' fault, I guess.

Whelp

 As we slowly drain our inheritance to pay for two kids college educations, it's troubling to see that college degrees don't necessarily pay off. There is undoubtedly a lot of noise in that data, as every college degree and every college is not the same. If we were to take the $250,000 that four years of college costs and just give it to the boys and let them work a trade, maybe that does create more wealth.

Luckily, both seem invested in fields where they are likely to make more money. Since we will be able -via intergenerational wealth from our own parents - to pay for their college, they will graduate without debt and hopefully be able to buy a home by the time they're 30. There seems to be some energy around the general scarcity of housing, and hopefully actual solutions will help bring the cost of housing down. At the same time, you look at Canada's housing situation and...yikes. It's not reserved to us. Same goes for Europe in some places.

My parents and grandparents' wealth allowed me to become a teacher, a career I deeply love, and yet still allow my sons to graduate without debt. That's an unbelievable blessing. However, I'm not 100% sure where we will retire to after we lose school housing. 

Does this make me "economically anxious"? Not really. I once had to pawn my bike and a gold coin my uncle gave me to make the grocery bill. Even then, I could always go home and not starve. 

I'm not sure how the disappearing wealth premium can be addressed. I think a wealth tax would help, if it was directed at making housing and healthcare more affordable. How many people see their savings wiped out because of medical bills? 

Still, one can't help but wonder why college is so damned expensive, if it doesn't give you a return on investment.

Tech Bros

 Among the worst aspects of our New Gilded Age is a revival - of a sorts - of the old Gospel of Wealth. The Gospel of Wealth was a pernicious idea that lay at the heart of much of the Gilded Age: namely that wealth was a sign of God's favor. If you were rich, it was a sign that you were superior to other people.

Today, this idea that wealth is a signifier of personal (as opposed to material) worth is most seen the cult around certain tech bros, most obviously Elon Musk. Musk is now so far off the rails that he's amplifying anti-Semitism, as the value of Twitter/X collapses. Is Musk the same level of gibbering moron that Trump is? No. But he's not a genius ubermensch either.

I suppose there's a parallel somewhere with all the tech bros literally stuck in the mud at Burning Man, but I'm a bit too tired to try and suss that our this morning. Something about the libertarianism of the tech bros who trek to Burning Man and then whine when it rains and the agents of the state can't get them out is just <chef's kiss>.

The Gilded Age Gospel of Wealth came with it a certain obligation to use your wealth for the public good. Too often this came in the form of noblesse oblige stuff like funding art museums and colleges, but sometimes there was actual charitable work being done. I have my doubts about the new generation of plutocrats. Gates has obvious done a lot, but this new generation of tech moguls seem unlikely to improve the civic life of the world.