Saturday Night Thoughts

 

• The New York Times ran this story about Guantanamo with the subheadline: "With 6,000 residents and the feel of a college campus, the U.S. Navy base has some of the trappings of small-town America, and some of a police state." It seems to me that if you have "some trappings" of a police, then it's a police state. Even police states have college campuses and small towns.

• Five Democratic Senators have joined red-baiting Republicans to oppose Biden's nomination of Saule Omarova to become Comptroller of the Currency. With friends like these who needs enemies? The progressives in both the House and Senate have been pretty steadfast and loyal supporters of Joe Biden's agenda. It's the centrist ideologues who have stymied it. Dems need to understand that they aren't entitled to anyone's vote. They have to earn it. These centrists have shown that their constituents are corporations and banks. Why bother?

A Couple Quotes

Resurrecting a couple quotes I put on here in 2013. Because I like them and because I can.

"Regarding the 'trickle-down theories' which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and social inclusiveness in the world: the promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger---nothing ever comes out for the poor."

Pope Francis

Written in the 1930s but could just as well describe today's 1%: 

"For these men were all the victims of an occupational disease--a kind of mass hypnosis that denied to them the evidence of their senses.  It was a monstrous and ironic fact that the very men who had created this world in which every value was false and theatrical saw themselves, not as creatures tranced by fatal illusions, but rather as the most knowing, practical, and hard-headed men alive.  They did not see themselves as gamblers, obsessed by their own fictions of speculation, but as brilliant executives of great affairs who at every moment of the day 'had their fingers on the pulse of the nation.' So when they looked about them and saw nothing but the myriad shapes of privilege, dishonesty, and self-interest, they were convinced that this was inevitably 'the way things are."

Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

A Veteran's Opinions on Veterans Day

 

• Both of the following can be true at the same time: (1) A significant portion of white working class folks are racist, and (2) a significant portion of the working class has been abandoned by the Democratic Party.

• Online NY Times ought to have an option to somehow show articles without the headline and sub-headline. So many times the article itself is pretty good but the headline ruins the whole thing, like it's totally unrelated to the article it's attached to.

• The problem with taxing "income" instead of "capital" and "wealth" is that lots of income (especially for rich people) can be hidden in trusts, partnerships, etc. If you own stock, there is an accepted value of that at any given time. It seems to me it would be harder to hide and manipulate your way out of that.

• Speaking of which,  the fact that trusts and other tax avoidance vehicles even exist--and at the end of the day, tax avoidance is really their raison d'etre--just shows that, even today, the tax code is written by and for rich people. The carried interest loophole still survives today, through Congresses and White Houses of both parties.

Biden's First Ten Months

While there are many areas that are disappointing about Biden's presidency, I have to keep reminding myself that Biden wasn't even on my Top 10 list of preferred presidential candidates. Don't get me wrong. I voted for him, and am glad he's President rather than 45. And maybe he's the only one who could have beaten Trump (although I'm not sure I totally buy into that conventional wisdom).

What to be disappointed about?

1. Other than the Afghanistan withdrawal, there is virtually no change in foreign policy from Trump, other than feel-good words. 
2. He should have been much more agressive from day one with executive orders, rather than getting 100% bogged down in legislative action. There are things in the areas of student debt, climate change, justice, et al that the administration could have done. Even if some things aren't universally popular, going on the offense is a good idea. Don't let CNN and Fox News define the narrative.
3. There have been more labor actions this year than in many years. Want to win back working class voters? Then be a more vocal ally in these strikes and union votes.
4. It might not have been successful, but Biden shoud have used the presidential bully pulpit to publicly call out the pro-filibuster Dems, especially in regard to voting rights legislation. There is some anecdotal reporting in crucial states like Georgia that some civil rights activists feel used and abandoned after working hard to win the White House and Senate.

This is all in the zone of what could have been expected. But some of Biden's rhetoric hinted at a little more movement to the left. It's been less that a year, so maybe more will happen. In the meantime I will try to mellow out with the understanding that in 2020 this is what the Democratic voters wanted. I was just hoping for more.

Friday Morning Musings

• The more I read about it, the more I am convinced that the main reason for the Virginia result (obviously there were many) was that McAuliffe ran a pretty piss-poor campaign.

• It is ridiculous that the pundits as usual are drawing conclusions of an inevitable disaster for the Dems in 2024. That could happen, but if it does it's going to be for reasons these same pundits aren't even thinking about now. Or because of events that might occur many months into the future. I always remind myself of the inevitability of G. H. W. Bush's re-election in 1992. His approval rating was above 70% only a year and a half before the election.

• It's pretty clear that when folks look into the mirror of Tuesday's election results, what they see reflected back is exactly what they wish to see (myself included).

• I agree with what I heard Rev. Dr. William Barber say a couple years ago: it is almost always movements that push politics rather than politics pulling people. In fact, movements can actually push the courts as well (e.g., marriage equality). This is certainly borne out in my lifetime. To the extent that I have any money and energy left, they will be directed at movements rather than politicians.

 

Americans and War

People totally misread the Democrats in the 1970s. I saw another Tweet today that talked about another Democratic "death spiral" like in the '70s because the lefties pushed the party too far left. 1972 was my first presidential election. McGovern didn't lose because he was too radically leftist; he lost because he wanted to get out of Vietnam and the majority of voters--including centrist Democrats--still loved the war, or at least bought into the "peace with honor" bullshit of Richard Nixon.

It's easy to spot this in history during my lifetime: Americans dig war; until they don't anymore. It happened with Vietnam. Folks loved it, until they didn't anymore. And that happened relatively quickly. The revisionists who want to pretend they never supported the War want to change the subject into "McGovern was too radical", rather than that he was weak and unmanly and not warlike enough for them.

It happened in the second Iraq War of GW Bush. Everybody loved it, including most Dems. Until they didn't. But by then the damage was done. But they loved his manliness. Almost everyone at The New York Times and folks like Chris Matthews on MSNBC were all in. Until they weren't. Americans like to appear tough.

And it happened again when Biden withdrew from Afghanistan. The war-loving media came out in full force. We didn't look tough enough or manly enough or something. So an American war disaster of 20 years was recharacterized as successful and running smoothly until Biden botched it up. Pretty incredible.

In all these cases, the centrist and conservative pundits were all in. Only years later do they pretend that they were against the war all along or some other type of revisionism.

Never underestimate Americans' love for war.

The Dems, Virginia, and Other Stuff

The Virginia results will be bringing out the mainstream media pundits in their various takes on why the lefties are responsible--as they always are--for this loss. So here's my leftist take.

A conservative Clinton Democrat lost an election in the (at least previously) conservative state of Virginia. (We should note here that all three-state wide races were won by Republicans.) It's hard for me to fathom how you can spin that into the fault of the progressives.

One possibilty, of course, is that McAuliffe was just not the right candidate at this time, or that he ran a crappy campaign. Probably some of the fault is here.

But I have a different view. I have been saying for a long time that chasing after these so-called white suburbanites is not a sustainable strategy. They just aren't reliable coalition partners. This was already looking iffy in 2020. These wonderful suburbanites helped take a pretty good majority in the House in 2018.

Then came the murder of George Floyd. Lots of white folks were sincerely upset about it and supported the ensuing protests. The problem is that this honest concern lasted for about twenty minutes. As soon as they didn't like the "look" of the protests--which various studies have show to be almost completely peaceful, except for the violence caused by police--the whitelash set in. As soon as people started talking about what needs to happen to solve the problem of police killing unarmed citizens, the discomfort set in and more whitelash. They were like rats scurrying off the ship. The seats they helped flip in 2018 were mostly lost in 2020. The centrist Dems tried blaming others as usual, but I'm not buying it.

It's time for the Dems to pursue and increase the number of coalition partners they already potentially have: minorities, younger people, workers. Many of these are voters that "swing" between voting for Dems and not voting at all. But you need to earn their votes. Stop taking them for granted. The current "negotiations" in Congress show this in real time. The reliable team players have been the progressives. The unreliable, bad-faith obstructionists (Manchin, Sinema, and plenty of others) are the conservative wing of the party.

When you rely on Blacks and other minorities to put you in office and then enact legislation and policies that serve Big Pharma and Big Oil instead, don't be surprised when bad things happen on election nights.