May You Choke On Your Cake

 I am currently still stuck in hospital with Covid Pneumonia. I'm fine, really, but stuck until my lungs clear up a bit more. Anyway, that means way more TV channel surfing than I am accustomed to, because I usually know exactly where to go to find something distracting to watch.

All of which is to say that I've scrolled through Fox News a few times. 

The reaction to what seems to obviously the right choice in Afghanistan is falling into as predictable a pattern as the collapse of the Afghan proxy forces. "Sensible foreign policy heads" are decrying...something...credibility...<waves hands>. These are the people invested in America's ability to create a nation in Afghanistan where none exists. They were given my eldest son's entire lifetime to solve this, failed and now want to blame Biden. Fuck'em, but I do think they legitimately care that things on the ground in Afghanistan are going to get worse for many, many Afghans,

Fox, on the other hand, is giddy. All their efforts to smear Biden - Hunter's laptop, Tara Reade, dementia, Major's nipping people, his return trips to Delaware - have fallen flat because they are all just transparently stupid. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is "bad." And what's more, it's undeniably real, unlike the idea that requiring vaccinations is the equivalent of Nazism.  

First, of course, they have to erase that this withdrawal was largely Trump's plan. In fact, the GOP had to scrub a web page touting Trump's role in creating the current circumstances. (People have pointed out that we "only" had 2500 troops there. But that was largely because we were negotiating our withdrawal anyway. If we wanted to stay, it would have required more troops.)

So rather than get into the merits of whether it was right to withdraw (it was) and therefore get snared by the fact that withdrawing from Afghanistan is broadly popular, Fox and the GOP are going to try and "have their cake and eat it to" by blaming Biden for the precipitate collapse of the Afghan government AND his efforts to rescue Afghans who helped us over the last two decades. Those of us who are sadly realistic about this situation also realize we can't abandon our friends.

That means immigration of large numbers of Afghans. 

That weird moaning noise you hear is Stephen Miller getting an erection at the thought of all the Islamophobic bile he gets to unleash. 

It is true that vetting the influx of Afghan refugees is important. It is also true that we must stand with them in their hour of need. The GOP and Fox get to attack Biden both for leaving (also Trump's idea, but shhh) and for abandoning our allies and for trying to save as many of our allies as we can.

I think Biden's Afghan plan and speech will go over better than the "Blob" realizes. I think the people at Fox "get" that. But they can always hate on immigrants and Muslims. That's evergreen territory for them.

It Was Always Going To End Badly

 It's been obvious for almost the entire 20 year occupation of Afghanistan that any Afghan government - and that includes the incoming Taliban regime - lacks widespread legitimacy. One propped up by US dollars, but dollars that largely disappeared into corruption, was no more legitimate than any puppet regime might be.

The rapid collapse of the Afghan "government" is a sign that - however painful and embarrassing - Biden's and (yes, Trump's) decision to get out of there was correct. Clausewitz's famous quote - "War is politics by other means" - is often warped to imply that politic should be ruthlessly Machiavellian. In fact, all military action must have an achievable political goal. What was striking about the Bush Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is how very little they understood this. They operated under the pretense of "everyone loves liberty" when that isn't necessarily so. Afghanis are primarily loyal to ethnic, tribal and kinship groups. There is no "Afghanistan" just as there isn't really an "Iraq." They are fictions on maps that war-gamers in Washington thought could be easily manipulated by simply replacing leadership in capitols. 

It is an undeniable catastrophe for Afghans who put too much trust in us, but I wonder how many really did. I hope we get out as many people as we can. I am sorry for what is about to happen to the women and girls of Afghanistan.

But it's been nearly 20 years. We had a generation to change Afghanistan and Afghanistan shrugged off those efforts in a few days. 

We failed because we could never succeed.  

I doubt beyond the Never Trumper Neocons and those already implacably opposed to him, that Biden will suffer too much from this decision. He will need to follow through on re-establishing multilateral coalitions like he promised. No one will care by Labor Day. Afghanistan will remain a backwards, brutal theocracy. A weak state, poorly governed. Like Syria. Like Yemen, Like Chad, Like Somalia. Like Poor Haiti. Like Libya. Like Iraq. Like Myanmar. Like Congo. 

We can't fix them. We tried. We were rejected. Spectacularly.

Can't Say I Disagree

 Yglesias takes on the United States of Fear.

Afghanistan

 It was pretty much always headed this way after 2003 and the pivot to Iraq. Maybe even without the pivot. So pissant whining like this is stupid. America is withdrawing from Afghanistan to be engaged elsewhere.

"We built nothing."

This Is A Weird Piece

 Vox did a very small "study" on people with breakthrough infections. They point out - accurately - that those of this with these infections are understudied and poorly understood. One thing they say is that people with this infections feel guilty. And maybe the dozen or so people they interviewed do feel guilty. Feeling are weird.

I don't feel guilty. I feel hopeless. 

When you mask for a year, then get your vaccine, and everything seems to have turned for the better...and THEN you get sick, you feel hopeless. Right now, I'm still struggling to catch my breath and I just don't know when that will get better. It just happened, even with the Pfizer vaccine to protect me. I don't feel guilty, because I didn't do anything wrong.

Maine And North Carolina

 Damn you guys...because you sent Collins and Tillis back to the Senate we have to deal with preening jackasses Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. I hope Greg Sargent is right that we are entering into a strange kabuki where House Progressives bottle up Manchin and Sinema's infrastructure deal until those two prima donnas sign off on the reconciliation bill, but every time something good happens, it seems to unwind.

Take The Good News Where You Can Get It

 Cuomo will resign.

The Senate actually passed the infrastructure bill.

Sometimes the wheels grind slow, but they do grind on.

Despondent

 Part of having Covid can be mood changes, and maybe that's what I'm going through right now.

On the other hand, I'm starting to wonder how we work our way free from the two greatest problems we face right now: this fucking pandemic and climate change. I do think Biden has made some laudable movements to "green up" our energy, but it feels like everything is spinning out of control.

I'm normally fairly optimistic about various trends and crises. I never thought Trump could hold on to power, for instance. But these are different - massive events that don't correct easily. 

Right now, I can't walk up stairs without getting winded, and I'm supposed to get ready for a school year? Most likely with masks again? 

I just want to slink into a hole.

Sick Of The Doomers

 Josh Marshall takes on Alex Pareene, who argues the apparent bipartisan win on infrastructure is in fact a loss, because it didn't apply the appropriate lessons from 2009-10. What is frustrating about all of this is Pareene is a very good commentator. Yet, as Marshall points out, there simply aren't the votes in the Senate to pass voting rights, immigration reform or labor reform. Critics of "Democrats" simply wave their hands at the very annoying reality that Democrats lost winnable Senate races in North Carolina, Maine and possibly Iowa and Kansas. If they had won those seats, any number of different courses of action would be open.

But they didn't!

Everyone who laments that Biden isn't LBJ or FDR steamrolling his way through Congress neglects that fact that both men had supermajorities to work with. Biden does not.

What he has done is get important emergency spending done quickly, allowed Manchin and Sinema their bullshit moment of attention and passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill, AND set the stage for a second, larger bill passed via reconciliation. (That bill is still going to have to pass fucking Sinema's bullshit reflexive "moderation.")

Before I got sick, I began a Twitter argument (FUN!) over whether we were Germany in 1930. I said that was absurd, and I remain convinced of that. The simple reason is that we have many, many moments in American history where terrible wrongs were committed in defense of White rule. It's "funny" how everyone is focused on the "lost history" of the Greenwood/Tulsa massacre, but they are also ignorant of Rosewood, Colfax, Memphis, New Orleans and countless other incidents of White supremacist violence. People who scream "If you aren't teaching Tulsa, you are whitewashing history!" are missing the point. 

It was never just Tulsa.

That the GQP has abandoned multiracial democracy is not a new development in American history. Precisely when did the White South - and its cultural cousins in other parts of the nation - accept multiracial democracy willingly? They tolerated it when they could still win majorities from 1968-1992, but every year makes that harder, so their resistance ramps up.

This is not new, and we have beaten them before, and we will beat them again.

But not if we retreat into an Eeyore shell of despondency and despair.

Reclaiming Patriotism

 The sickening imagery of 1/6 has led many people from the center left to become deeply uncomfortable with patriotic symbols and expressions of patriotism in general. Sickening images like Hair Furor literally humping the flag have soiled the garment in many people's eyes.

Matt Yglesias has been trying to resurrect left of center patriotism, especially as the Far Right has moved to embrace fascist movements abroad like Viktor Orban's Hungary. As American culture moves continually leftward, the Right seems willing to abandon American values like democracy. They simultaneously wrap themselves in the flag and shit all over the founding documents and ideals of the country.

The Rightist attacks on what they have vaguely labelled "Critical Race Theory" (really anything that accurately describes the racist past of this country) are part of this last gasp attempt to preserve the White Ethnonationalist state that prevailed largely until the 1960s. It began with the 1619 Project, which accurately placed both African Americans and White Supremacy in their proper historical context. If you grew up with shitty, inaccurate, white washed history, it was a shock (and likely an unwelcome one) to read that essay.

Except you probably DIDN'T read that essay. You read someone criticizing it. There was one sentence that I thought was bad about the Revolution, but what was striking about the essay was how the author's father remained intensely patriotic, even in the face of Jim Crow. If there is a fascinating truth to the American story, it has been the steadfast patriotism of many groups that have traditionally been excluded at times from American power. Immigrants have been targeted well before Trump came along, and yet they continue to come here and become our most devoted citizens. Black Americans are certainly familiar with America's history of racism, yet they (mostly) refuse to give up on America.

My worry is that the one group that has never really bought into the promise of America are Leftists, and their ideas are increasingly gaining traction beyond their usual grip on Academia. (This is not something I worry about from Joe Biden.)

If the Right wants to embrace anti-American regimes like Orban's, Bolsonaro's and Erdogan's, then they are ceding the field to the Center Left.

What I find weird is that "Doomers" who see 1930s Germany around every corner in America are so blind to our own country's history. I'm reading Fawn Brodie's biography of Thaddeus Stevens and the politics of the 1840s-1870s were more fraught, violent and repressive than anything the GQP dreams of today. 

If you're worried about attacks on democracy in America, there are other examples than freaking Hitler. America's commitment to its ideal has always been a conflict, an argument, not a settled case.

The proper attitude for the center left should be to reclaim American patriotism along the lines that Obama did: focusing on "in order to build a more perfect union." It is the fight to make America what it claims to be that is the truest expression of patriotism. Not coddling Viktor Orban or claiming against all available evidence that America is the only or even most racist country in the world.

Well, That Escalated Quickly

 Despite being vaccinated, I've been briefly hospitalized with Covid pneumonia. I woke up Thursday with bloody flecks in my sputum, so I went to the ER. I was put on Remdesivir and steroids and began to bounce back almost immediately. I went in around noon and could taste again by 5:00pm. I should be released tomorrow.

The fact that I got so sick is a testament to the virulence of the Delta variant.

The fact I've recovered so quickly would seem to speak to the vaccine working even in a bad breakthrough scenario.

But if people want me to wear a mask, I'm going to, and you should, too.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall provides some context.

Good News From Ohio

 Shontel Brown defeated Nina Turner in the primary for OH-11. Turner represents the "politics by division" wing of the Left. She throws more bombs at Democrats than Republicans. She was able to outraise Brown, because she could tap into a national network of Sanders' donors. Brown simply had Democrats on her side.

As we approach yet another critical midterm election, hanging on to every House seat is important. What's more, it's important that Democrats in Washington ultimately are all pulling in the same direction. I think that's something AOC ultimately gets, but I'm not sure Ilhan Omar does.

In an unlikely endorsement of David Brooks, Martin Longman points out that a certain cultural leftism has taken root. On the one hand, Turner seemed to represent the class and economic issues that would resonate with WWC voters. Where I differ with Longman is that I don't think a policy portfolio is going to shift the needle much. There's a pundit's fallacy that the arcane details of policy move voters. The sort of voters who get moved by that are already committed ideologically. Only a few voters are moved at the margins, and that is often for more generalized "feelings" about the state of the country or the candidate. 

Turner was a candidate for the Angry Left, petulantly relitigating the fact that Sanders lost. The reason Sanders and Turner lost is that they tended to attack other Democrats. For the Twitterati, Brown represents the dreaded "establishment Democrats." To the bulk of the party, she's just a team player. 

You need those.

Holy Crap

 Most of Twitter is a deep cesspool of awfulness, but this thread is amazing. Basically large numbers of anti-vax protestors are hired actors.

Twisting Freedumb Into A Hangman's Noose

 Paul Krugman takes on the unfolding disaster in Florida. He points out that while Florida is roughly at the national level of vaccine uptake, senior citizens in Florida are overwhelmingly vaccinated, leaving the bulk of the population unvaccinated. He then moves on to Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis is likely the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024, if Trump doesn't run. His conduct during the pandemic is perfectly Trumpian, with the caveat that Trump is an idiot who suggested injecting bleach and DeSantis is a cynical shithead who simply wants to latch on to whatever Trump started.

Since the beginning, DeSantis has embraced this messed up idea of "freedom." It's something I've encountered with a cousin on Facebook. The idea that masking and mandatory vaccinations are an assault on our precious freedoms. 

Krugman lays it:

My answer is that when people on the right talk about “freedom” what they actually mean is closer to “defense of privilege” — specifically the right of certain people (generally white male Christians) to do whatever they want.

If you can explain to me the difference between a toddler's understanding of autonomy and this bullshit "Freedumb" movement, I'm willing to listen. Do masks suck? I mean, a little bit. But as someone who is suffering through a breakthrough infection, I can tell you it definitely does not suck nearly as much as having Covid, even fully vaccinated.

Krugman continues:

Once you understand that the rhetoric of freedom is actually about privilege, things that look on the surface like gross inconsistency and hypocrisy start to make sense.

Why, for example, are conservatives so insistent on the right of businesses to make their own decisions, free from regulation — but quick to stop them from denying service to customers who refuse to wear masks or show proof of vaccination? Why is the autonomy of local school districts a fundamental principle — unless they want to require masks or teach America’s racial history? It’s all about whose privilege is being protected.

This is part and parcel of the freakout by certain segments of White America to a changing country. They see their impending marginalization, but they are erecting these false structures to shield themselves from it. They respond to cognitive dissonance with abject denial and a retreat to fantasy.

Trump won 46 and 47% of the vote in his two elections. Rather than see that the majority of Americans rejected him, they simply create a fact-free narrative that he actually won. 

Masks work, and despite our personal experience, vaccines work. My wife and I feel like shit, but we aren't going to die. But if you've been conditioned to see "gubmint" as "crazy socialists after your freedom to make a joke about your Black co-worker," then you reject common sense calls to return to mitigation and you reject calls for mandatory vaccination. 

One of the clearest examples of this is the term "pro-life." Republicans have been clinging to this term, even as they support the death penalty and invading Iraq. If we properly understand anti-abortion sentiment among many conservatives as about preserving the privilege of men to have children without the necessary consent of women - the "forced birth" position - then there's no longer any hypocrisy. This is why they can scream about "bodily autonomy" when it comes to vaccines and not abortion (or even birth control). It is why the GOP has moved forcefully away from supporting basic ideas of democratic rule.

There are always limits on freedom. In fact, we know the GOP supports efforts to limit the freedom of teachers to teach, people of color to protest and on and on. 

They do not care about freedom.

They want autonomy.  Freedom exists within the confines of a well-run society. Autonomy is simply divorcing yourself from everyone else. 

As the pandemic has shown, that's deadly.

It Broke Through

 My family is not its own little break through infection from Covid, likely the Delta Variant. 

My eldest son had been fighting a sinus infection off an on all summer and then felt really sick. There had been a close contact at work so we had him tested. He came up positive. My younger son felt sick, but tested negative. My wife - who's been fighting Lyme's Disease - also tested positive. Meanwhile, I'm in Georgia. I feel achy one day and run a fever that night, but then feel fine. I make it back to my family and almost as soon as I get home, I hit the wall. Fever, chills. My wife feels like a truck hit her. 

My eldest son is fine and we both felt so much better this morning.

I'm not worried about our health; we are on the road to recovery. Here's what's concerning. Massachusetts has some of the highest vaccination rates in the country. Nantucket has the highest vaccination rates in Massachusetts. 

Delta found a way around that.

When I was in Georgia, after finding out that my family was sick and I was likely sick, too, I wore a mask when I was around people. For the most part, everyone was fine with that. One guy at the hotel I was staying at asked me why I was masking. I didn't want to come out and say "I have Covid" but maybe I should have. Instead, I said I had been in close contact with someone who tested positive. Maybe, I said, I could shed the virus, so I was wearing a mask to protect others.

His response was illuminative of a certain mindset. "Those idiot doctors don't know nothing."

I wanted to tell him that there was much they don't know for certain about what is, after all, a novel virus. The original "Masks don't work" in March of 2020 was...bad. The fact that most Americans don't know what '95% effective" means is...bad. Delta broke through in our family, but we are going to be OK. I'm a little concerned about my wife, because of her Lyme diagnosis, but hopefully we are on our way through this.

However, if Delta is actively working its way around the vaccines, maybe we are headed for another hellish Fall. That scares me, because most people are simply done with giving a shit about each other. A year of Trump's endless messaging problems ("Hey, kids, let's inject bleach!") made everything worse.

If we can reach 75% vaccination rates, we will likely STILL see some breakthrough infections. We need a plan for that.