The Bloom Is Off The Rose. Again.

 It sure seems like the midair collision will end Trump's "honeymoon" if it wasn't over already. Any crisis exposes so many of the terrible flaws of Trumpistan: the incompetence of the minions; the blustering attack-style of Trump; the barely concealed racism; the contempt for basic governance. 

There are, as always, certain things that simply track with pre-existing views of the party. If the subject of the discourse is health care, Democrats are winning. If the subject of the discourse is taxes, that's good for Republicans. 

Basic competent governing is now trending as a Democratic issue. Some of this is unique to Trump's idiocy, some of this is the long standing contempt for governing that goes back to those who couldn't tell Reagan's rhetoric from reality, turning a bumpersticker into a philosophy. Americans memory-holed his awful handling of Covid and other crises during his first term, but I'd wager a few of them are thinking, "Oh. Yeah.  Shit." Chaos is his brand.

Every small failure of government is his to own. Blaming it on DEI is basically Trump finding a way to use the N-word in public. It's blame shifting, and only his cultists will buy it. 

We also have to acknowledge what is different from his first term. The people around him are viler and less competent. Elon Musk has his tentacles in everything. He's older, and he was never a smart man to begin with. He's even turned up the level of Orange again.

Attack

 Trump, predictably, turned the crash last night into a political cudgel. To their credit, the Times was having none of it. Here are some facts: 

There was no director - even an acting one - of the FAA, after Trump and Musk forced out the incumbent. 

Trump gutted the aviation safety committee for being "DEI."

You have the strange "buyout" option for public workers - which would include air safety public servants.

Now, did any of those things cause the first major domestic air crash in 15 years? Let's concede that they likely didn't. The evisceration of public service is still in its infancy, and we can hope to strangle it in its crib.

To do so, Democrats have to "politicize the tragedy". Blame it on Trump and Musk's war on governmental functions. Suggest that RFK Jr is an airplane crash for public health. We haven't had an major airline tragedy in this country in a long time; the story will have some legs. 

Tie it to Trump.

Is it true? Who give a fuck! Trump ran on inflation being high when it was normal; Trump ran on rising crime when it was falling; Trump ran on rising illegal immigration when it was falling. If you try and fight Trump - a man with no sense even of what the truth is - with "facts" you are going to lose. Fight him on his turf. Make tendentious connections. Suggest as fact things that are contingent on future data.

Trump has to own every single dysfunction of the world, just as Biden had to own the inflation that came after Covid.

Evil People Are Stupid People

 At least for the moment, that seems to be working in our favor. The deep incompetence of the people who support Donald Trump will lead to quite a few moments like this one, or the birthright citizenship ridiculousness.

Of course, the Courts being our last best refuge for laws and the constitutional order is likely simply going to lead to an attack on them.

It's Been Nine Days

 Trump's assault on constitutional government has been going full steam ahead for nine days, but only nine days. Hell, the Cuban Missile Crisis took thirteen. As HCR notes, this was the plan all along. The media especially, but Democrats, too, deserve some responsibility for not hammering Project 2025 mercilessly from June until November. The fact that Trump said, "I have no idea what this is" should not have been taken at face value, obviously. Democrats seemed to launch the attack, then - when it was denied - stopped using that angle of attack. Meanwhile, the Trump people hammered trans prisoners and the price of eggs until it sunk in. Simply saying "But muh democracy" wasn't going to cut it. Pointing out - again and again - the assault on constitutional governance that is manifested in Project 2025 really should have been a priority. 

Still, we are already seeing pushback in the courts, and I know people are still shell-shocked about Trump v United States, but these are red-letter violations of the law and the Constitution. 

We already have some evidence of how unpopular some of this stuff is. They are already walking back some of the most lethal impoundments, like that of PEPFAR. Some of that is because they are too stupid to really understand what they are cutting, but most of it is because denying aid to children is, like, really unpopular.

We also have some more concrete signs of hope. Last night, there were two special elections. One was in a heavily Democratic Minnesota State Senate race, where Harris won 83-14, but the special election was 91-9. More important was an Iowa State Senate race. Trump won that district by 21 points. The Democrat just won 52-48. That's a 25 point swing. It's dangerous to assume anything, but if Florida 1st CD has a similar swing in it's special election, that could flip the district to Democrats - at least until 2026. It would absolutely flip NY 21, which is being vacated by Elise Stefanik. It also puts Mike Waltz's district, Florida 6, in play. 

Obviously flipping those districts would have the immediate and practical effect of flipping control of the House. More importantly, it would be a shot across the bow of any Republican member of Congress who is anything close to a competitive district. 

The Reuters poll of Trump's job approval shows that his "honeymoon" was incredibly short lived. The day after his inauguration, Trump (amazingly) had a positive job approval rating of 47/39. It's already under water at 45/46, and likely to sink further. When asked about his policies, these are the favorable/unfavorable numbers:

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords: 39/56
Tariffs: 43/54
Ending "DEI": 44/51
Ending Birthright Citizenship: 36/59
Pardons for January 6th: 34/62
Renaming Gulf of Mexico: 25/70

Now, it's perfectly reasonable to ask "Why did Americans vote for this guy, if they opposed so many of his policies?" I think the reason comes back to the idea that people who aren't engaged in politics simply don't think politicians will do what they say they will do. I've always found that politicians will TRY to do what they campaigned on, it's just that action is hard in our system of government. Trump and myrmidons have simply decided to bulldoze the separation of powers and rule as a dictator.

That won't be popular. It's already unpopular and much of it has yet to sink in. Bird flu will cause egg prices to rise. Deportations will start to seize people's neighbors and friends. Tariffs, if they happen, will also raise prices. 

There are a few Democrats on Capitol Hill who get this new landscape. AOC and Eric Swallwell are really good. Chris Murphy and Brian Schatz are good at it, too. The Senate Dems need to withdraw unanimous consent on every single thing until Trump backs down on impounding funds. Trump will push until he gets real pushback (see the farcical episode with Colombia). His minions are truly evil ideologues, but Trump is basically a walking spleen.  He's tender to every setback and is dependent on projecting strength. Punch him in the nose and watch him cry to Fox News.

You don't have to win today; you don't have to solve this crisis today, but the wind is shifting. Seize it.

Colombia/Columbia

 Heather Cox Richardson talks about the recent brief, bizarre tariff war between the US and Colombia (not Columbia, as some GOP morons have spelled it). Part of her Substack is to create a primary source document for future historians, so there's a fair amount of summary of events with the implications being somewhat implicit. She speaks briefly about the dynamic of this spat that seems important going forward.

As she lays out, the US and Colombia are long time allies with good relations - somewhat unusually for a Caribbean nation. The Biden Administration had an agreement in place with Colombia, and in fact the migrants on that plane had been arrested and processed by the Biden Administration. Trump's decision to use a military flight, with the migrants in shackles is what prompted the spat, which has apparently been mostly resolved.

The significance of this weird, short incident is twofold.

First, Trump provoked Colombia into a fight. He actually quickly backed down. He immediately spun it as a victory. This sort of Politburo style media strategy could work in the degraded press environment we currently have. Trump broke an agreement with Colombia, Colombia kicked back, Trump agreed to honor the existing agreement, he declared victory. I think that's going to typify a lot of what he is going to do. A lot of bluster and braggadocio but very little actual policy movement (where it doesn't rely solely on the Executive Branch of the US government). We saw this with the NAFTA/USMCA during his first term. He tweaked NAFTA and said he had rewritten the rules.  Bullshit.

Secondly, Trump erratic, belligerent global leadership is going to be a huge boon to China. The more fights Trump picks - with Colombia, with Panama, with Denmark, with Canada - the more soft power programs that he axes - like PEPFAR or the WHO - the less influence the US will have.

From 1992-2005, the US came very close to being a global hegemon. Even after that period, there was little question who the most powerful country in the world was - economically, militarily, diplomatically. Some of that power, though, was a byproduct of the relatively benign nature of US global leadership. Sure, we did some terrible things like invading Iraq for nonsensical reasons. Generally speaking, though, the globe saw America's pre-eminence as largely something they didn't have to worry about. In some instances, like the Navy's commitment to keeping trade routes open, it was a positive good.

Trump doesn't realize this. He thinks "soft power" is for suckers. This is why he's embracing naked imperialism - whether he pushes ahead with militarism is another question.

The Colombia Incident is a stark reminder that he exists in the reality that he creates for himself. He "won" the incident". He also takes actions that imperil America's unique place in the world.

The latter will likely be the most damaging. 

We Are, In Fact, Going Back

 The Trump Administration has been a firehose of awfulness in its first week. That is entirely be design to overwhelm people. The problem is that eventually people start to catalogue everything and plan to fight some of this stuff in courts. We've already seen that with birthright citizenship and the firing of the IGs. I think people worry about the courts for good reason, but the idea that Trumpists have cleared all this with John Roberts misreads their plans, I think. Flood the zone with outrage and then hope some other stuff sneaks through.

The recent order to ban trans people from the military seems like it falls along those lines. It sure seems like a violation of civil rights law and precedent. Maybe it sticks, maybe not. However, let's say it does. How permanent is it? Presumably not until there's another Democrat in the White House. (Or even a humane Republican, if they exist.)

It's bad, it's cruel, it shouldn't have happened, but it's not irreversible. 

Dominance Politics and Gender

 Josh Marshall has a meta-post about readers' favorite posts or themes and one was his formulation of "bitch slap" later "dominance" politics. 

In this environment of reality TV/professional wrestling politics, where being "alpha" takes primacy, it's going to be exceedingly hard for a female politician to counter that. Again, I'm not saying I endorse the conclusion, but a woman who engages in "dominance" politics is a "bitch" and if she doesn't, she's too weak to be a leader.

Regrettable, but I again think that our first female president will almost have to be a Republican.

Beyond His Control

 Krugman takes a very sobering look at the deportation situation. The reason it's sobering is that we have widely speculated that Trump is going to leverage tariffs to compel certain behaviors or at least to claim that he has compelled certain behaviors. He made some mild changes in NAFTA his last term and then claimed he had made the best deal ever. Whatever, dude.

Tariffs can be turned like a knob depending on real time feedback that he's getting. He just slapped a bunch of tariffs on Colombia for refusing to accept deportation flights. Flowers and coffee are about to get more expensive. That might bite and he could back down, or at least claim that Colombia did.

With deportations, you start to enter Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" dynamic. If you start to crackdown, migrants will go home preemptively. As Krugman notes, Trump has unleashed the worst impulses of the worst people and we can expect some level of vigilantism. The Joe Arpaios of the world are just salivating at the opportunity to narc on the neighbors, because they don't like the music coming from next door.

Immigrants are the lifeblood of our economy in so many ways. With a maturing population, having a supply of workers who come, work and then often go home is a huge boon to our economic growth. Deportations, combined with tariffs, could lead to the worst possible outcome: stagflation - stagnant growth and inflation.

Oh, and it's racist and cruel, but apparently no one cares about that.

The Pace Of Resistance

 Writers like mistermix are pissed that Democrats have been largely passive this week, with a few exceptions. He thinks that they need to push back on things like Elon Musk's overt appeals to Nazism. 

I get it. I think we all want that magic button we can push that just ends Trump's febrile grasp on our national discourse. "Why won't Democrats say the magic words" is great if there were magic words. As the campaign showed, there is not enough currency in truth anymore.

The problem with the "Do Something" caucus is that Trump hasn't be president for a week yet. He is doing or attempting to do real harm across all sorts of vectors, and there has been at least some pushback already on things like birthright citizenship. They came within one vote of scuttling Hegseth, and the fact that they couldn't is 100% NOT the fault of Democrats. 

As I wrote last Tuesday, you are not likely to see Donald Trump face real justice. This era is not going to be conducive to Victory Days, where we vanquish (name your preferred cause).

We are certainly NOT going to defeat Trumpism (again) this week or this month.

Trump has the wind at his back, and he has a blueprint in Project 2025 that relies on moving quickly to "overwhelm" Washington. However, his firing of the Inspector Generals on Friday is pretty clearly illegal, and there are some Republican Senators who feel that actually matters. Hegseth will - I feel confident about this - be blunted by the Pentagon's vastness. 

Remember, most of the people around Trump are idiots or at least profoundly ignorant. To the degree they are smart it's in suckling up to Tangerine Jesus or working their own grifts. They are slightly more capable George Santoses. When you have a conservative judge lambasting the lawyers on the birthright citizenship filing, it's not because he's a part of the "Resistance", it's because the lawyers are dumbasses arguing dumbass positions. 

Then you have Trump's cozying up to billionaires. People don't like billionaires, whether they are throwing of Nazi salutes or not.

When the Japanese spread rapidly over the Pacific, they extended themselves too far, too fast. It became known as "Victory Disease". When Russia invaded Ukraine, much of their army pushed quickly towards Kyiv, before being stuck in a traffic jam and slowly chewed up. 

The famous dictum "Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake" I really think applies here. The Trumpists are taking Trump's 49.9% popular vote as a mandate to reshape America is ways that are going to be profoundly unpopular and damaging. Republicans will own every measles outbreak, every inflationary spike from tariffs, every family ripped apart by deportations, every failure of FEMA or other government agencies. They own it all.

If Democrats controlled even one branch of government, then "doing something" would be appropriate. But there are not magic words to reverse this blitzkrieg. Of course, in the long run, the Blitzkrieg failed. 

The Assault on Liberalism

 Ever since the rise of talk radio in the 1980s, the word "liberal" has been turned into a smear. The absurdity of some farther left positions has aided in this, but it's been a coordinated attack on the very concept of liberal politics by attacking the word used to describe it. As Heather Cox Richardson points out, "liberalism" is what won World War II and built the strongest country the world has ever known.

Richardson goes further and argues that liberalism defeated fascism, and now fascism is rising as a force here in the US - a nation that has forgotten its past as standing against fascism.

Krugman (sub req?) notes that trade liberalization has made America a wealthy country, even at the expense of manufacturing jobs. 

The torrent of shit emanating from DC this week - and for the foreseeable future - is intended to overwhelm resistance. However, there are forces of gravity that should crash this, the same way they crash all radical attempts at governance. The American people did not vote for Project 2025, despite Democrats warning them about it. They are definitely going to get it, though, good and hard.

None of this stuff is really popular outside MAGA. Sure, "foreign aid" is always a bugaboo of the poorly informed, so freezing that could be popular. People don't want to bring measles back, though. People don't want trade wars that spike prices.

I also don't think they want to crater NATO, as Trump seems intent on doing. The bonkers Greenland saga seems half about the idiot man-boy who wants to be king of the world and half about blowing up NATO. 

When Trump "won" in 2016, it shocked me about the moral nihilism of my fellow countrymen. How could they even think about voting for this charlatan? This time around though, I have to face the fact that people are going to die because we elected this wretched moron president. I don't like it, and it disgusts me that I'm sitting here, shrugging my shoulders about the fact. I wish RFK Jr could bring a plague down just on MAGA (and anti-vax cranks might just find that out), but it will hurt all of us.

In four years time, Trump will be gone. I know some GOP asshole has introduced an amendment to repeal the term limits. Not happening. So, when he goes, the question will be what sort of wreckage is left in his wake.

Economic wreckage will blight the lives of those most vulnerable.

Political wreckage will further erode faith in our institutions.

It's in international relations that the wreckage could be irreparable. America's privileged position in the world is not simply because we have aircraft carriers, make Marvel movies and are the richest country. We are privileged because we at least try and articulate an idea about democracy that inspires people around the world. Even if we soundly defeat Trumpism - presuming we are allowed to elect our leaders in the future, which I think we largely will - the world will always look askance at the country that elected him in the first place.

Dead Americans

 Yesterday, I wrote about the overt death threats that have started in Trumpistan. There will be people who are killed by political violence. Trump's pardons will exacerbate that.

There are other ways Trump will get Americans killed. The first is related to the pardons. On the one hand, when you remove the consequences for political violence - on behalf of Trump - you incentivize his worst cultists to commit more violence on his behalf. Yes, there are probably a few insurrectionists who don't want any more part of that circus. There are others who are simply violent people. Some of them will come home and commit domestic violence against those who may or may not have talked to the police.

I feel pretty certain that within the next few months, at least one of the people Trump pardoned will be arrested for a crime that is not explicitly political in nature. Democrats need to Willie Horton the shit out of that person.

We also have Trump's bizarre pardon of Ross Ulbricht, who facilitated drug trafficking. Given how Trump leveraged the fentanyl crisis to win votes, pardoning a guy who helped move drugs around seems odd. I doubt Ulbricht recreates Silk Road, but some sort of imitator will crop up, again because Trump has seemingly decided that drug dealers are OK, as long as they are white.

Finally, Paul Krugman notes that what is happening in the broad field of public health is incredibly alarming. Withdrawing from the World Health Organization is "bad" but we are going to see measles come back, notably in Red States, as national guidelines are abandoned. Kids die of measles. And this is before RFK Jr gets his weird assed claws into the national health apparatus.

Trump has clearly hit the ground running with all the Project 2025 horrors. While we have moments like the judge who ridiculed the Executive Order ending birthright citizenship, the "energy" is entirely with Trump's blitzkrieg on American institutions.

I do think that Josh Marshall is correct that these actions are going to backfire politically. I think Pete Hegseth gets confirmed by a tie-breaking vote by Vance. Then, if anything happens to the American military, his manifest incompetence gets the blame. As soon as one of those January Sixers commits a crime, Democrats need to hammer that story. The first kid who dies of measles has to get the Riley Laken Treatment.

Trump is a fucking idiot, and he's surrounded himself by evil men who know how to cater to his bloated ego to advance their own odious agenda. Things will get worse, but TRUMP IS NOT IMMUNE TO THE POLITICAL LAWS OF GRAVITY. When Americans die because he won the election, that will have consequences.

We Need To Talk About Sexism In American Politics

 Paul Campos argues around a point about how it wasn't that Trump completely upended the map, so much as brought new voters into his camp. However, he also got a smaller share of the eligible voting population. He gained about 3,000,000 votes from 2020, and Harris lost about 5,000,000 and there were more non-voters this time - despite the pandemic presumably reducing the ability to vote.

I think the most obvious explanation is the anti-incumbent wave that has swept the Global North. That's a common thread across multiple countries.

However, we have to talk about the fact that Trump won more votes, and I think we have to acknowledge that sexism continues to play an ignored role. Harris ran a really good campaign, I thought. She moved to the center, she was charismatic, she destroyed him in the debate, her ads and rallies were great.

She lost votes from Biden's 2020 run.

Unlike parliamentary systems, where the leaders of parties are the leaders of parties, the leader of an American party is the president. (The problem Democrats will labor under is not having a "leader" until they have a nominee. Conversely, not having a "leader" means bad things will not be ascribed to Democrats.) To be a Prime Minister, you have to ably lead coalitions together within your legislative party, and appeal to important constituencies that support the party.

In a presidential system, everything revolves around the office of the president, and the office of the president "codes" male. Those low information voters not only made poor guesses about Trump and Project 2025 and his felony convictions. They also are exactly the sort of people who say, "I dunno, something about her doesn't seem right." And it's not only men who express this.

Biden was the safest, most boring pick possible and he wiped the floor with Trump. Trump, meanwhile, has twice beaten female candidates.

I very much would like to see a woman become president of the United States. But if I'm advising the Democrats for 2028, I would strongly suggest that they not fight against the ingrained sexism that goes unnoticed and unremarked upon. I think our first female president will almost have to be a Republican. Democrats need to find someone with AOC's social media skills and the right sort of feistiness to take the fight to the Broligarchy - someone like Swallwell, but not from California. Pritzker maybe? I don't know, but I'm not taking my chances on Gretchen Whitmer vs JD Vance, because I just have very little faith in people to acknowledge that they can't quite see a woman president.

Of course, Trump's manifest awfulness will give a lot of wind to the sails of AOC and others like her who can step up in this moment. In 2020, Black Voters in South Carolina said, "Give us the safest guy" and that guy flipped Georgia and Arizona. 

Death Threats In Trumpistan

 The combination of Trump's blanket pardons for everyone associated with January 6th, the control of almost all organs of government and the vile nature of Trump's personality will lead to a constant whiff of violence in the public square. First, apparently, is the Episcopal bishop, Marian Edgar Budde, who had the temerity to suggest that Trump be compassionate towards those that were afraid. In yet another iteration of "a hit dog will holler" the Trumpist cult lashed out against her for criticizing Trump from the pulpit. The criticism, again, was suggesting that he was NOT compassionate. Again, the deeply hateful nature of this new Christianist (they don't deserve to be called evangelicals) movement is on full display.

That Bishop Budde has received death threats is entirely unsurprising. That some of these death threats undoubtedly come from "Christians" should be entirely unsurprising. 

The question that events will answer sooner rather than later is whether these death threats constitute some form of hyper-aggressive trolling or actual intentions to commit violence. Obviously, you can get 1000 death threats and 999 of them could be trolling and that single instance of rageful hate is enough to end a human life. Certainly, too, Trump's release of the January 6th rioters suggests that violence carried out in Trump's name will not come with the same consequences.

In the end, it feels inevitable that there will be martyrs for American Democracy. In the coming weeks, months and years, people are going to die. Whether they can be counted on fingers or require wall inscribed with the many names is unknown. The fact that we don't know, that we aren't certain how many Americans will die as human sacrifices to this awful man is precisely what all we cringe bougie liberals were saying was the reason not to invest this man with power again. 

It would be nice if the "find out" part of FAFO was restricted to Trump voters. These are not nice times.

It's Not DEI, It's Civil Rights

 Trump isn't "attacking DEI overreach."  He's attacking basic civil rights enforcement.

You Have To Let Go Of The Idea Of Justice

 There's a classic tweet from the last eight years that goes something like this:

"Ah ha! Let's see Trump wiggle out of THIS!"
(Trump wriggles out)
"Ah, well...nevertheless."

For those of us who look at Trump and see the very worst of what America can offer the world, we have been waiting eight years for Trump to finally face justice. When he was convicted last June, it felt like - at last - he was going to face consequences for a lifetime of misdeeds.

"Ah, well, nevertheless."

As we embark upon Trumpistan 2.0, we will see corruption that would make a Gilded Age machine politician blush. We will see vindictiveness and pettiness straight from reality TV. Cruelty is on the menu again.

Yesterday's pardons of the January 6th insurrectionists is a good taste of what's to come. That brief window when Trump might have been held accountable and his movement dismantled has faltered on Merrick Garland's sclerotic sense of norms and the American people's short memory and moral bankruptcy.

If you want to survive this, you have to divest yourself of the hope that justice will prevail. Instead, endure what must be endured, point out the perversions of justice, point out the corruption. Work towards winning the House in 2026 to check Trump's power. Work towards winning in 2028, when Trump should be a spent force. Maybe at that point there will be some justice, but probably not. Trump will likely pardon anyone and everyone he can. 

If you hold onto the idea that justice will one day prevail, then you will once again reap a bitter harvest. In the end, the only moral center is apparently the one you hold yourself to. 

Musk Gave A Nazi Salute

 As Josh Marshall notes, this is not up for debate. Don't debate it. He did it. We all know he did it. Bookmark that for when sane people are in charge of security clearances.

Marshall's point about not debating this is also important. Part of what fascists do is retreat behind "We were only joking." I would expect Musk to make some sort of pivot in this regard. He's a troll, first and foremost, so he may not be an actual card carrying member of the Nazi Party.

But he gave the salute and that's not up for debate. 

Don't get bogged down in trying to adjudicate this crap. That's the "flood the zone with shit" strategy. That's perpetrating so many outrages that you don't know how to argue against any one thing. 

So don't argue. I know that Dems are feeling the sting of losing and think they have to contest every information space. I just don't think that's possible. 

Musk is a Nazi until he proves he isn't, because he gave a Nazi salute.

Another Thing I've Given Up On

 Trump is going to collect bribes like a kid getting candy on Halloween. It's already started. There is going to be more. It will be bad. For those of us who have been waiting eight years for Donald Trump to be held accountable, that day is not going to come until he dies. Sorry. He's going to get rich. Sorry. 

I just want an America I can squint at and recognize in 2029.

Avoid The Churn

 I skimmed some of the Executive Actions that Trump is going to take today, and some of them are just blatantly unconstitutional and illegal. It's the not that they are all bad. But for instance, he says he's going to issue an executive order legalizing marijuana. That's not the way that works. Now, maybe he's going to issue an order stopping enforcement of marijuana laws, but even that is on thin ground - same with his stay of the TikTok ban. He wants to declare an emergency on the border. That seems tendentious. 

As Yglesias notes, we really have no idea what Trump is going to do. That's a feature of the information asymmetry that exists around Trump specifically and American politics in general. Republicans don't need policies, just rhetoric and ideology. So, we have very little idea what will happen in the next month, much less the next four years. I mean, the dude is a pathological liar.

Trump's PR insight is that Americans - especially Republicans - aren't really paying attention to governance. This is why all the objectively good things Biden did disappeared down the memory hole. Instead, people read the headlines; they dip their toes in the gestalt; they imbibe the vibes. So, he's going to SAY a lot of things. He's going to attempt a lot of things that likely won't pass muster even with this Supreme Court. Achieving things won't be the point on a lot of these verbal assaults. "Driving the narrative" is what matters, like with the Greenland nonsense.

Then again, he's stupid, mean and vindictive, so maybe he's planning an invasion of Greenland.

All I know is that trying to react to everything is going to kill me, so I am going to deny him that oxygen, at least in my wee bubble. 

Lethal Modesty

 Joe Biden admitted that he made a significant blunder in not talking up what he had accomplished as president. I think unacknowledged is the fact that Biden is not a good speaker and his already average talents in that regard were reduced by age.

Heather Cox Richardson lays out some of what the Biden administration has done to reign in monopoly, and I agree that I know of very little of this. Monopoly, secret rebates, defrauding customers...our new tech overlords are certainly doing everything they can to resurrect the oligarchy of the Gilded Age.

She ends with three notes of caution.

The first is that Team Trump and Team Billionaire are now married more devoutly than any of his actual marriages. Moving the inauguration indoors was partly to avoid the weather and partly to hide the small crowd of 8 years ago. But MAGA did come and they are being left out in the literal cold while the billionaires cram into the rotunda. The optics are bad for a man who cares most about optics.

Secondly, the bird flu issue is going to have an impact - on the very least - on food prices. Added to deportations - which should hit food prep the hardest - things will start getting expensive again. If tariffs come along, too, then we should see spikes all over the place.

Finally, we are coming up upon the debt ceiling again. The GOP House does not have the votes, I believe, to raise it with a clean vote.

Trump won in part because he really is good at imaging and Biden was almost uniquely bad at it. However, events don't give a shit about imaging. He is now in charge and we shall see if the people who thought of him as their economic champion will still rally around him if he tanks the recovery.

The Corruption To Come

 CBS is considering "obeying in advance" by settling a frivolous lawsuit from Trump. As Scott Lemieux points out, this is basically a bribe. Still, the landscape is what it is. The Courts are not a safeguard for the First Amendment anymore and Trump will pervert the Executive into his weapon. 

The question is now: what will the behavior of the news media be when they have a credible story of Trump's corruption? Will they publish? Will the kill the story to avoid payback? How will actually independent sources like Pro Publica survive Trump's lawfare? (Hey, if they can use the term, so can we.) 

The Orban playbook involves suppressing the independence of the news media. American media has historically been independent, but that is hardly the case right now. You have Disney/ABC capitulating and now Paramount/CBS. The LA Times and Washington Post are in the tank, too.

We can talk about how Democratic messaging was "bad" all we want, but a corrupt news environment makes all that talk moot.

Hell Yeah, Joe

 Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified. Lays down a marker. Now the GOP has to explain why they want to "repeal" it.

Biden's Valedictory

 Biden's Farewell Address last night consciously echoed American history. There were nods to Washington's Farewell Address, Eisenhower's and the entire Progressive Period. Biden's stabs at oligarchy are accurate and important, and I think it's important as an historical document and a "marker" against future action.

The text of his remarks - I didn't watch it - is good. He accurately lays out the perils of the new "malefactors of great wealth." I think similarly, Josh Marshall and Will Norris are onto something when the note that Democrats should become more vocal champions of the "Gig Economy."

However, my choice not to watch it isn't just a facet of my long standing aversion to "political theater." Biden is a shitty speaker at this point in his career, and that has to be part of the discussion of his legacy and the 2024 election. During his presidency, we were able to see actual results that pointed to a pretty impressive grasp of the legislative process and the dynamics of Congress. He got a lot done. However, during that same period, he was simply unable to be a forceful advocate for those policies.

It's always risky to be saying that the economy is in great shape, if people think the economy is in bad shape; you look "out of touch." However, the real accomplishments of the Biden Administration never really become tangible to people. Biden lacked the easy wonkish explanatory ability of Bill Clinton or the soaring rhetoric of Barack Obama, even on his best days.

When Harris took over in July, opinions about the economy had largely been locked in place. I don't think she could do much about that. Having the bully pulpit more or less unoccupied from 2021-2024 wasn't a big help though. Again, I'm skeptical that rhetoric would have saved the day. Ultimately, it was the slow movement of the Justice Department to move against Trump that could doom us. And even if they had prosecuted him more vigorously, Biden or Harris probably lose to some creature like Ron DeSantis, given the anti-incumbent moment we are in.

Still, Biden's invisibility during much of his presidency was helpful to get stuff through the "Secret Congress" but it was bad politics, and it should be acknowledged as such.

Facts And Narratives

 Democrats - indeed most incumbent parties in the past few years - labored under the gulf between the actual facts and what the narrative was in people's minds. "Everyone knew" the economy was bad, and in fact it was bad for about 16 months, with inflation really punching people in the guts. One of the usual targets of post-defeat circular firing squads is to focus on "message" which I think is sort of besides the point, as message won't counter the priors that people hold. "Republicans are good for business and therefore the economy" is one of the most pernicious falsehoods that people cling to. Trying to argue against that is tough.

Still, Democrats need a "message" and it sure seems like attacking the new broligarchy is a great start. The first Progressive Era targeted the "malefactors of great wealth", as middle class Americans made common cause with more radical actors to reshape American governance. With space travel becoming the provenance of two multi-billionaires and the Billionaires Boy Club increasingly sucking up to Trump, a populist anti-billionaire message would work. People already associate the Republicans with business elites, the point is to make the business elites the problem. The fact that Obama had to bail out the banks muddied those waters. 

Time to make them clear.

California Aid

 The wildfires that struck - and continue to strike - residential areas of Los Angeles are already becoming a political football for the atrocious people making up the Republican Party. Routine threats are now attached to relief bills. As Paul Krugman points out, Red States are the ones on the receiving end of most federal tax dollars and an unusually large percentage of federal disaster relief. At no times have Democrats threatened NOT to give disaster relief to Florida for all the hurricanes it faces, even as Florida and southern Republicans threaten to withhold aid from California.

The point Krugman makes is not to say that Red States shouldn't get aid. The point is that California is the main source of federal revenue and what's more, providing aid to fellow citizens is exactly what a national government does. It's not wrong to provide aid; it wrong to withhold it. It tears at the fabric of our common national project.

But isn't that the point of withholding aid? To sic Americans at each others' throats? Isn't that the heart and soul of MAGA?

Republicans Won't Be Able To Legislate

 Martin Longman has done good work explaining why the GOP's legislative strategy of using reconciliation to enact their agenda and do all sorts of sketchy stuff is unlikely to pass.

The margins in the House and the deals that Mike Johnson has made with some of his more rabid members have really boxed him in. Also, Trump has said he won't cut Medicare, because even that tapioca brained buffoon knows that's political suicide. Even if the GOP could find the votes to kill Medicaid, I have my doubts that the Senate will go along with that. Medicaid is hugely important to millions of Americans - many of whom voted for Trump. 

Meanwhile, even tax cuts - the one unifying idea between MAGA and what remains of normal Republicans - will be hard to pass, with many GOP members wanting to bring back SALT exemptions. 

Over all of this hangs the debt ceiling. Traditionally, Republican Speakers have relied on Democratic votes to raise the debt ceiling. Traditionally, that has led to some horse trading. The question is: What should Democrats demand in exchange for a debt ceiling increase? I would think something significant.

If there is a debt ceiling crisis, though, I would imagine the Trump-friendly courts will simply decide that the 14th Amendment applies and the debt ceiling is unconstitutional. In the interim, that will screw up world markets quite a bit. A debt ceiling crisis, followed by eliminating the debt ceiling would be a perfect outcome for Democrats, as the debt ceiling is a loaded gun that Republicans routinely waive around.

In the end, the horrors that are coming will be coming from the White House and the various idiots and crooks Trump is going to staff the government with. It's going to be very hard to actually pass legislation, including budgets.

Bootlickers

 Recently, Mark Zuckerberg decided to end Meta's "woke" policies of being nice to its employees and respectful of the truth. Marshall says this decision won't age well. These companies that have bent over backwards for Trump and MAGA are making a pretty risky gamble that Trump's plurality of the popular vote represents some sort of trend, rather than a last gasp of some culture war crap. Yes, the identity politics of the left got out of hand, but that message seems to have been actually received.  Meanwhile, the GOP seems hellbent on doing some crazy shit.

Now, much of that won't wash, but even trying to do it will elicit a backlash. Again, if Trump does what he says he wants to do, he will wreck the Goldilocks Economy.

What's more, all this Real Murica bullshit evades the fact that the coastal elites are what make America great. It is, in fact, America's constant work at trying to become a better version of itself that makes us the dynamic power in the world. It's also why some of the most egregious examples of "woke" are likely going to go away. 

The general gestalt of America - namely that we are a really nice people - isn't going away. With Trump "cruelty is the point" but that's why he's been largely unpopular, despite the partisan advantages he enjoys. 

Companies that decide to be cruel to their employees - and that's at the heart of what a lot of these companies are doing - will find it hard to retain those employees. Car companies don't have LGBTQ people in their ads to be "woke", they do it to sell cars. 

What's more, I certainly hope if Trump follows through on his vindictiveness and punishes his foes, that the backlash is immediate and sincere. Even more so, though, I hope that Democrats don't fall into the Merrick Garland trap in 2028, should they regain power in the face of oligarchic support for Republicans.

As these techbro libertarians pick a side, let's remember that when we hold the levers of power again.

Trump's Terrible Four

 There are four terrible nominees that Trump has put forward: Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel and RFK, Jr.  The first three are the most immediately dangerous, as they will have a large voice in national security matters at a time of international unrest.

That doesn't mean that RFK isn't really dangerous, too.

Equilibrium

 As we come to the eve of Trumpistan 2, I think it's important to maintain one's emotional and psychological equilibrium.  Let's be clear: Things are going to get worse for quite a few people, though probably not as bad as a worst case scenario might suggest. But, no, Trump is not going to invade Greenland or Canada.

What's more, the only reason he drops this illiterate and illogical rants is to drive the narrative. He's not going to reduce prices, like he promised. (If prices fall, it's because we will be in a depression.) If you are talking about his latest stupid utterance, you are playing his game. What's more, the news media are totally banking on you watching their shows as they breathlessly report on the latest shit to dribble from Trump's piehole. "What could this mean?"  It means you're a dupe.

This also, most likely, applies to the horrible things Trump and Republicans want to do via Project 2025 and other malefactors. Will they try and deny health insurance to millions of Americans? Yes, they will. Will they succeed? I think Martin Longman is correct when he points out that the Republican legislative strategy seems hopelessly naïve. This is not a functional legislative majority, especially in the House. The current House is 219-215. There will be an election to replace Matt Gaetz, and it will almost certainly be a MAGA idiot. However, Stefanik and Waltz will leave soon for the Executive Branch, and that gets you to 217-215, before the special elections. 

Mike Johnson has almost no leeway to lose votes, and he will certainly lose votes. The cross pressures on the GOP caucus are legion. Read Longman's summary, as it covers the important stuff. 

As you hear of the next horrible thing "Republicans are planning to do" take a deep breath. Yes, it might come to pass, in which case, things will get worse, people will get upset and Democrats re-take the House in 2026. Or just as likely, it fails. They hammer together some tax cuts, screw over the budget and deregulate some business and it's 1990 again. Breathe.  It's going to be a journey.

What Happened?

 I've been reluctant to weigh in on the "Why did that asshole win again?" debate, because the data can be messy for a long time. My operating theory of the election was that there were no or few Biden>Trump voters. So, how does 2020 compare to 2024?

Arizona
Harris got about 100,000 fewer votes than Biden. Trump got 100,000 more than 2020. 

Georgia
Harris actually got more votes than Biden. Roughly 60,000 more. Trump got 200,000 more than 2020.

Michigan
Harris got about 70,000 fewer votes than Biden. Trump got about 150,000 more than 2020.

Nevada
Harris got about 2000 more votes than Biden. Trump got about 70,000 more than 2020.

North Carolina
Harris got about 30,000 more votes than Biden. Trump got about 120,000 more than 2020.

Pennsylvania
Harris got about 30,000 fewer voter than Biden. Trump got about 160,000 more than before.

Wisconsin
Harris got about 35,000 more votes than Biden. Trump got 85,000 more than 2020.

Write me a tidy narrative about that. Harris matched or improved Biden's numbers in Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. You can argue that Georgia and North Carolina share demographic similarities, but Nevada and Wisconsin are more similar to Arizona and Michigan, respectively. 

Meanwhile, some DNC delegate on Twitter says that the following numbers of Democrats stayed home:

Arizona: 282,000 Georgia: 269,000 Michigan: 312,000 Nevada: 35,000 North Carolina: 234,000 Pennsylvania: 363,000 Wisconsin: 159,000

But I'm not seeing that in the raw data. 

The fact is that Trump improved on his 2020 numbers. He also improved on his 2016 numbers.

The American electorate looked at Trump's felony convictions (or didn't); they looked at his felony indictments; they looked at January 6th; they looked at the debate debacle...and they came out to vote for him in ways they hadn't before. A campaign without a normal GOTV operation absolutely got out the vote.

The good news is that low propensity voters seemed to make up Trump's victory. If - or more accurately when - things go sideways, they will blame Trump, the same way they "blamed" Biden for an almost comically good economic recovery. When Trump exits the stage, especially if it comes on the heels of some sort of economic or other catastrophe, it's tough to see the next generation Trump. 

Silicon Death Valley

 Josh Marshall uncovered what might be the genesis or at least the feedback loop of Trump's Greenland nonsense. As you might expect, it has some link to his new friends in Muskylvania. The techno broligarchy is now calling so much of the tune, because of Musk's corruption of Twitter (and potentially Zuckerberg's corruption of Meta). With Musk now the Grima Wormtongue of Donald Trump, the whispers of this idea of stateless living now has a proponent - I guess - in the White House. My guess is that Trump really has no interest in creating a libertarian non-state state. 

This really brings us back to the techno sociopathy of Silicon Valley. Let's go back and remember that Musk, Peter Thiel, Peter Sacks and the like are not engineers, though they likely understand more engineering than most. They are venture capitalists who have made a killing off the "next" technology. This has created a massive, billionaire fueled Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby they think because they acquired Tesla or built PayPal that they are the finest humanity has to offer. 

It's Social Darwinism with ones and zeroes. 

Like Social Darwinism, this movement if fundamentally un-democratic. Since most states at least give a façade of democratic legitimacy (the People's Republic of Korea), the norm of democratic government is fairly hard to escape, and if you wanted to escape it in 2025, that means, well, Russia or North Korea, which isn't a great place to be.

As a result, you have these techbros masturbating to fantasies of creating their own states. Or, again, anti-states. Musk doesn't want to be the Neil Armstrong of Mars, he wants to be the Cortez. He wants to live on Mars, surrounded by sex robots and other drones who will keep him alive in a simulacrum of imperial splendor, without having all those pesky human slaves to keep an eye on. 

Look, states were created in Europe as a successor to empires, then exported that idea through their own imperialism. The reason why the rest of the world kept states even as they expelled Europeans, was because states just work. 

I do hope that these tech weirdos go off and live in their libertarian non-state somewhere. 

The rest of us would be better off.

Carter's Eulogies

 Heather Cox Richardson does her usual eloquent job of summarizing the words of those who said goodbye to Jimmy Carter yesterday. The striking contrast was, of course, to Donald Trump. Trump has ultimately been "more successful" than Carter by virtue of his re-election. However, it is difficult to imagine the same homilies being delivered at his funeral. I don't think Dubya Bush or Obama will speak on his behalf. It will be closed affair that signal the end of the degraded politics of his era. Carter will instead remain that "road not taken" when it comes to compassionate leadership, especially on matters of energy and peace: two issues that drive the world today.

As Trump tweets out slurs and insults towards California, even as it burns, there can't be a starker reminded that "character is destiny." Carter's character could not overcome his circumstances as president, but it shown afterwards. Trump's character has facilitated his "will to power" but it will also lead the country into an orgy of corruption and self-dealing. When he finally dies, that will be his legacy.

Important Persepective

 Josh Marshall is 100% right about this. All this Greenland/Panama/Canada stuff? It's not going to happen. It could conceivably happen, in the same conceivable way that Korea and Japan go to war over shipping lanes. Possible? Yeah. But very, very unlikely. Koreans and the Japanese don't love each other, but they aren't going to go down this road to Crazytown. 

Trump is already in Crazytown. He's the mayor. He says this crap to get us to react to it. Marshall is very astute that this bullshit is bullshit for bullshit's sake. He wants you to react to the next outrage. 

The proper tone to adopt for this is mocking, not alarm. Don't let Grampa Shoutypants live in your head. He poses a threat to many things, but Canada isn't one of them.

Which is a shame, because annexing Canada would make it impossible for Republicans to win elections anymore.

America Has A Christian Problem

 This is a good explanation of why those who consider themselves the most devout Christians have consistently backed a man of literally no morally redeeming qualities.

And, yes, it's terrifying.

The Hidden Realignment

 A lot has and should be said about the movement of the college educated into the Democratic Party. It is "bad" if you get people engaged in what James Carville called "Faculty Lounge Politics" about land acknowledgements or whether feminism can properly include trans women. 

However, the hidden strength of this is that Democrats are now the party that votes, regardless of the election. The most important question about 2028 - aside from whether or not we have a free and fair election - is whether a non-Trump MAGA can mobilize his voters. It's a cult of personality and those are very tricky to transfer. It's also another reason why, if American democracy truly dies under Trump, Merrick Garland's fecklessness will be among the leading causes of death.

How Crazy Is He?

 Paul Krugman asks that question of Trump, and it's the central question in global politics right now. Yes, there was the batshit insane presser he had yesterday. I'm sure the media is thrilled to have "content" to cover.

Trump's threats to invade - in no particular order - Greenland, Canada, Mexico and Panama are most likely just his usual bloviating bullshit. He probably feels that attention has not been lavished on him in adequate tonnage, so he's started saying crazy nonsense so that people will start talking about him.

Krugman, however, looks at his economic statements and the central conflict between the Republican Economic Daddies who just want some tax cuts, eviscerating the regulatory and welfare state and maybe some pardons, because why the hell not and the MAGA hordes. The Republican Daddies want a few targeted tariffs, maybe a few symbolic deportations to keep the rubes happy and then let the Biden Economy hum along in it's very prosperous traces.

Trump is having none of that, at least rhetorically. The Greenland nonsense is likely just nonsense, so that makes it plausible that he will, in fact, acquiesce to the Daddies in Wall Street. However, he's increasingly coming under the influence of the Tech Broligarchs, and they have some weird economic ideas.

What Krugman notes is that bond markets - the sober older brother of the wastrel gambler that is the stock markets - have basically looked at his statements and said, "Yeah, he's going to deport people and have huge tariffs." Now, those tariffs will almost certainly be for sale. If you grease Trump's palm, he will exempt your supply chain, while punishing your rival's. That's why so many companies are supplicating themselves before Trump; it's why the Washington Post is going to go into the shitter soon. Bezos can't afford to anger Trump.

We will see if Trump actually goes Full MAGA on his tariffs and deportations. Again, the "best" outcome is that he does so and tanks the recovery, from which his reputation and popularity never recover. The bond markets seem to think that's what's going to happen.

UPDATE: I do like how the more social media savvy Dems, like Eric Swallwell and Chris Murphy have greeted all this imperial bluster with a refrain of "How does this make eggs cheaper?" Keep hammering that.

The Coming Crypto Bubble. The Coming Crypto Collapse.

 Annie Lowery does a good job running through what is about to happen in the world of cryptocurrencies. The biggest delusion among investors is "this time will be different." It involves the idea that this new thing is super smart because super smart people are working on it and super smart people don't make dumb mistakes. In reality, this is Keynes' "animal spirits" in digital form. 

Ultimately, the best we can hope for is that crypto does not destroy the adjacent financial institutions. Libertarian orthodoxy would suggest that commercial banks would not engage in such risky investments in a time when the government is being run by a corrupt buffoon. You can't count on a 2008 competent bailout with these thieves in charge. Still, the allure of a quick buck will be irresistible, and the entire financial system could be body slammed.

Private vs Public

 Paul Krugman takes a swing at the actual place to cut down on wasteful government spending: payments to private insurance companies. In particular, he looks at privatization in Medicare, which has been a slow-rolling process of Republicans trying to push more people onto Medicare Advantage. What Krugman seems to show is that "hiring" private companies to provide Medicare services does not, in fact, reduce costs. What's more, the quality of service has not improved.

The issue, in some ways, goes back to the basic function of markets. Markets work best when there is competition and choice. I might pay less, relatively speaking, for socks than for ties, because people see my ties more than my socks. Or I might splurge on really good, thick wool socks because I live in frigid New England, and simply not update my neckties at all. In fact, I chose the latter, and because I had a choice, I was able to determine where my clothes spending went.

There are certain segments of the economy where "choice" rarely works. Education is one, where geography limits the ability to send your 8 year old off to school. We rightly determined that education - at least through 12 grade - should be a public good. Same goes for some utilities, like water and electricity, those are privately held and highly regulated.

Health care is a sector that most countries have decided is a public good. One of the problems we have is that we are a very large country. Rural hospitals are struggling and often closing. Because they are for-profit, it's tough for large health care providers to justify keeping rural hospitals open. Urgent care centers, though, provide a decent stop gap, I guess. That's in many ways a market solution to a supply and demand issue.

The problem, though, is that our health care system is fundamentally a profit-driven enterprise. Not just health insurance companies, doctors and the monopolistic health care "networks" are also looking to maximize payouts.

One of the (uncredited) successes of the Biden Administration has been reducing the amount of money that pharmaceutical companies can charge people. That's an actual saving of government money. I feel confident in saying that Trump's people will destroy that.

DOGE is not about saving government and taxpayer money. It's about rewarding private equity. 

Four Years Later

 I'm not sure I have much to say about January 6th on the fourth anniversary. I agree with Yglesias that the scariest part is how quickly Republicans - who seemed unified in condemnation on January 7th - moved to accommodate and excuse Trump's role in trying to end electoral democracy. 

I don't fear a man becoming a tyrant in America.

I fear the movement that backs him up.

Modern Flagellants

 Back in the 13th century, certain devout/mentally ill Christians began to whip themselves into bloody messes in order to demonstrate their piety. Sometimes, pain can facilitate hallucinations, and this is true whether you're a medieval monk or a Native American Sun Dancer. 

David Frum gave a talk in Canada about the odd framing of "settler-colonialism." On the one hand, it's a description of the way in which Europeans took over the Americas. On the other, it's a moral condemnation. The issue with the condemnation is that it focuses moral outrage on Europeans from centuries ago, delegitimizing their institutions and does nothing to help current Native populations. 

It is absolutely true that the default position of the British and successor governments was often the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. There were exceptions, such as the Proclamation Line of 1763 - which was itself a cause of the American Revolution. It's a long history that generally unfolded the following way: land hungry Whites wanted cheap land; the government obliged them by forcing Natives west and then onto reservations; sometimes White reformers got traction, even if their reforms were often terrible (the Dawes Severalty Act, for instance).

What's odd is the idea that one group of people defeating and expelling or subjugating another people is somehow unique to White Europeans. Like, that's the entire history of the human race. One group expands until it needs more room or resources and then goes to war to expand or die trying. This was true of Natives, too, before Europeans arrived. 

When Cortez marched on Tenochtitlan, he did so with tens of thousands of Native allies who had been brutally subjugated by the Aztecs - themselves a pretty brutal people. The British colony of Jamestown was settled in the midst of a consolidated and expanding political confederacy that had pushed Iroquoian speakers westwards. The paramount chief, Powhatan, saw the English as potential allies and a source of metal weapons and trade in his fight against his Native enemies. Every conflict between Whites and Natives was also a fight between Natives and Natives.

The proper context of the extraordinary crimes that Whites perpetrated against Natives is the entirety of human history.

This isn't intended to excuse those crimes. Contemporary critics were able to look at what Whites were doing and condemn it. The current intellectual (or perhaps more accurately "academic") climate is that Whites are uniquely brutal and savage. This was intended as a corrective to earlier narratives where typically when Natives won a battle it was called a massacre, whereas if Whites wiped out a village of Cheyenne, it's a battle. The thing is, we now call Sand Creek a massacre, not a battle. We are correcting that record.

The problem with things such as "land acknowledgements" is that they come absent with any tangible action. As someone said, acknowledging that your town council meeting is taking place on "stolen Narragansett land" without a plan to give it back is basically taunting.

In the end, you have a modern day equivalent of flagellant. They aren't scourging their flesh, but rather they are trying to heap upon themselves the moral opprobrium due their ancestors. Or perhaps by flagellating themselves sufficiently, they purge themselves of crimes they themselves did not commit. "Look how good I am. I'm not like those other white people."

The reality is that you are not like those other Whites, because the cultural context has changed. The ability of a small-L liberal democracy to change has led us to a reckoning with the fact that our ancestors did bad things. Those bad things - brutal, bloody things - are not our fault. Heaping the sins of the fathers upon the sons is morally wrong, too. It's an act of psychological self-harm akin to whipping your back with a leather whip imbedded with barbs. Your god has changed, but the action is still the same.

History can inform the present. It's not, however, a perfect guide. Things change. If we want to help Native populations, empty verbal flagellation is not the way. Its main purpose is to make those who know the proper shibboleths feel pure, like the monk with blood running down his back who smiled up at God, as if to say, "See how pious I am!"

A Governing Party Is A Legislating Party

 The inability of the Republican Party to pass anything approximating actual legislation is canon at this point. They cannot seem to pass any bills that command bipartisan support - which is necessary in the Senate - and so they try and push through odious base-stoking message bills through one house, but not the other. 

All of which raises the question about what they can actually accomplish. Martin Longman points out the problems with their current strategy and House margins. Trump wants a "big bill" because of course he does, the big man-baby. The problem can be seen in the Speaker election. In order to certify Trump's victory, the House needed a Speaker, so whatever reservations hardliners and moderates (such as they are) might have to Mike Johnson, they came together to get Trump certified.

Once it comes time to pass a bill that will do all sorts of terrible fucking things, keeping all those whackjobs in line will be challenging. In the story Longman cites, there's the following quote from Jason Smith, the Chairman of Ways and Means: "Just look at history, the Democrats couldn't even do it."

I guess, maybe, Smith is suggesting that the Democratic Party is some sort of borg-like entity. In fact, the reason why Democrats can usually pass bills, is because they have a functional ability to negotiate ahead of the votes. Once Stefanik and Waltz join the Executive Branch, the ability to corral the needed votes in the House will be nearly impossible. 

Trump will still be able to launch his trade war and do his deportations without a lot of Congressional help. He will still be able to enrich himself at the public's expense. However, it will be really tough to actually pass bills that have a long term impact on people. 

Hopefully.

Livelsberger's Manifesto

 Josh Marshall runs through the manifestos of the man who killed himself in front of Trump's hotel in Las Vegas. He was one of a new brand of violent extremists who seem to proliferate around Trump, including both those who idealize him and those who wish him harm. I do not include the kid who shot at him in Butler, Pennsylvania, who appears to be more a "famous suicide" than anyone with an ideological motive.

Instead, we have the guy who loaded up his van to attack DC; obviously January 6th and now Livelsberger, who appears to be something of a mentally disturbed man prone to violence and extremist views. 

His plan was roughly similar to Aaron Bushnell's, the man who lit himself on fire over Gaza. Bushnell was also a veteran, though he did not serve in an active war zone like Livelsberger, who appears to suffer from PTSD and possibly CTE. Basically, these were men who thought that a dramatic suicide would spur some sort of reckoning. 

Livelsberger wanted to foist some sort of anti-Democratic insurrection along the lines of January 6th. He was also obsessed with the sort of empty, performative masculinity that revolves around Trump. Here are some excerpts:

Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

Focus on strength and winning. Masculinity is good and men must be leaders. Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.

Stop obsessing over diversity. We are all diverse and DEI is a cancer.
Thankfully we rejected the DEI candidate and will have a real President instead of Weekend at Bernie’s.

Consider this last sunset of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people. Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to no one.

This is the stuff of cults. 

Bushnell grew up in a Christian cult, but Livelsburger appears to have joined Trump's. A cult mindset can make acts of suicide into acts of devotion. That Trump and Musk are the lodestars of this act of self-destruction is crushingly sad.

Marshall and others have written about the disinhibition in Trumpistan - how we are moving towards an odd culture of violence that is slightly different from our usual culture of violence. It is political but not exactly ideological. It serves not a coherent ideology like fascism or communism, but "Trump" as an avatar of disruption and destruction of the status quo. 

The world, it turns out, isn't designed to make you happy. In fact, the apps on your phone, the low grade enshittification, consumer culture...they are all designed to leave you unsatisfied, while showing you a world where everything is great. This hopelessness, I think, breeds the sort of vaguely political violence of Luigi Mangione and Matthew Livelsberger. 

The fact that Livelsberger was a fan of Trump - same in some ways as the Butler shooter - means that the narrative of these violence events does not comport to easy and premade media narratives. So we ignore them.  

Thoughts and prayer, I guess. 

Squeaker Of The House

 Mike Johnson fails to become Speaker on the first ballot. Three Republicans voted for someone else and he could afford to lose only one vote after Massie came out against him. This includes Stefanik and Waltz who will join the Trump Administration later this month. 

If - once Stefanik and Waltz leave - there is a motion to vacate...hoo boy.

America The Bloody

 Josh Marshall has a really important take on the recent spate of violence that seems to stalk our land. We readily remember the 1960s as a violent time, because of the high profile assassinations. Those assassins were a motley blend of horseshoe theory ideologies (except for King's assassin). State violence was mirrored by protest violence. The 1990s are not as remembers for being violent, yet that was the era of Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement.

What Marshall points to is a comparison with the late Gilded Age period. That was a time of real violence. Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley were assassinated, but Garfield assassin was just a lunatic. There was labor violence and violence against labor. There was the Klan re-establishing white supremacy in the South. There was the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (Marshall forgot this one). 

That violence was traced to America's first real exposure to wide disparities in wealth among free White men. Institutions were perceived as corrupt, the promise of reform that came out of the Civil War - Free Labor, Free Men - was dashed against the concentration of extreme wealth and monopoly. The violence was not a left or right wing insurgency, but rather anti-status quo. It was less purely ideological - or rather much of it lacked a programmatic agenda - and more a violent lashing out against a society that seemed to be changing faster than people could cope with.

Violence is bad, by the way. Lauding Luigi Mangione is the sign of a sickness within our overall polity. There might be a link between the two vehicle based attacks yesterday.

We seem headed not for a Civil War or even a broad based reign of terrorism, but rather the slow steady drip of these random acts of violence that - by their accumulation - are no longer random. The anti-politics of Donald Trump seems to feed into this.

As I said, violence is bad, and I wonder if there comes a point when people remember this.

I Feel Ya Paul

 Paul Campos and I overestimated the idea that low information voters would turn on Trump once they started paying attention to things, including the Stormy Daniels hush money case. I also felt that there wouldn't be any or many Biden>Trump voters. 

It is difficult to imagine how voters could vote for a man who was a convicted felon, who had been impeached twice. I simply couldn't grasp how that was possible, except for a complete YOLO/WGAF ethos on the part of tens of millions of American voters.

Limbic Capitalism

 Four years ago (five?) David Courtwright introduced the idea of limbic capitalism, which is to say the use of addictive tendencies in the brain's limbic region to sell shit. 

Paul Krugman notes today that this is better understood now, especially with regards to children and social media. There is usually a lag between our understanding a thing is bad and our political efforts to limit exposure to that vice. In some case, Krugman mentions alcohol, we fail to truly limit that vice, but we have more success with children. We can resist paternalism broadly, while accepting that it has a place with the young. The overwhelming evidence of harm being done by social media on children - especially girls - is a call to action.

The problem with the patrimonial kakistocracy that we are entering was made clear with the Kid Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate 91-3. It was killed in the House under an avalanche of Facebook money. Basically, we have a situation where a few companies enrich themselves by getting children addicted to social media, and they will bribe the relevant figures of Trumpistan to get what they want.

That's a great example of how patrimonial corruption degrades our lives. Online gambling is another. It's a vice that immiserates those who can least afford to squander their money on prop bets in the Jaguars-Titans game. At the very least, advertising for online gambling could and should be banned. We did it with cigarettes decades before we managed to truly corral the evil of tobacco. 

It is precisely because there is an obvious solution to an obvious problem - social media is bad for kids; gambling is an addiction - that we might expect our elected officials to act. That's the 91-3 vote. It is precisely this sort of obvious reform that will die at the hands of the patrimonial kakistocracy. 

Patrimonialism

 Interesting take on Trump's uniquely unqualified nominees. Patrimonialism is sometimes called "elite cooptation" where you bring certain elites into a beneficial relationship with the government in order to control that country without democratic measures.

Patrimonialism's track record of success, as mentioned, is poor. Authoritarianism is often brittle - it seems hard but it's fragile. It struggles to adapt. Also - and this is my mantra for Trump 2.0 - the point of authoritarianism is corruption. That's entirely the point, though egotism is a part of Dear Leader syndrome, the reason people go along with it is to wet their beaks.

The second thing about authoritarians is that they are usually pretty dumb, or if they aren't dumb, they surround themselves with sycophants so they get terrible advice and do dumb things.

So, for the sake of optimism, I don't think this is the "end of democracy" in America. I think this will be a period of terrible, corrupt governance by stupid people doing evil things, but that it will not end well for them - or, sadly, us.