How does the ratchet work? It begins with small, unobjectionable, or perhaps even salutary steps, coupled with assurances that potential downsides or extreme outcomes will never come about. Then, over time, incremental moves are made in the same direction until the unreasonable policy that we’d been assured would never happen is entrenched reality.... Trump has yanked the other way so far on these ratchet issues that it’s not clear when or how the left can get them back to the status quo ante.
Don't his antagonists like to think everything he could do on his own with presidential power the next Democratic President can just undo? But not so long ago, they thought that what their Presidents had done could not be undone? That was the ratchet theory.
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A philosophy of [unqualified] monotonic change pursued with affirmative action and baby... fetal steps to obfuscate liberal transitions.
We had an election. Democracy itself was at stake. The President at the time told us so. Those were the stakes.
Well, guess what: Democracy lost.
We're a Republic now.
AKA the slippery slope. Gay marriage led to gay adoptions. Now we have the alphabet soup LGBTQIA+. Conservatives now have the guts to push back against gender mutilations. Baby steps.
Because Trump.
We're a Republic now.
Under a Constitution that mitigates authoritarian progress. In a nation with a pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness corporate charter.
The problem for the left is if Trump fixes the problem, then it will be obvious when they try to break it again. For instance, a year ago, they were telling us Biden couldn’t fix the border without a new law being passed that allowed thousands of illegal aliens to illegally cross the border every year and then after X number did so, then they would enforce the border for the rest of the year. Trump didn’t get a new law, but he’s enforcing the border without allowing x number to simply violate it then enforce. He started day 1. Now that Trump has proven that the laws on the book were sufficient, the left lost that narrative. Now they a mad.
For this to be successful with any sense of longevity, the media monopoly must be seized away from Progressive Democrats and opposing views be aired. This is underway now, but..... will it become de facto in time for midterms?
No I think NRO views the Ratchet Theory much differently. In simple terms the old saying that you can fund a government program but never end one is possibly what Althouse refers to, as it is the accepted myth among the elite. And they know, as she wrote, of course a succeeding politician can undo it. Wink wink.
For a long time prior to Trump I read NRO so you didn’t have to and the Theory was more specific in how it works to prevent slippage, as real physical ratchets work. A large part of it was the budget process, Baseline Budgeting, which by design kept increasing and there’s much more but I can’t put it all here.
TLDR version: budgets go up with inflation but never down with recession plus “emergency spending” never goes away = ratchet that can only increase by design.
Budgeting is the theme of the day.
So are the nevertrumpers of NRO changing direction?
Trans marriage under the principle of political congruence ("=") progressed with affirmative adoption of womb farms and sperm banks. That said, civil unions for all consenting adults. #NoJudgment? #NoLabels? All's fair in lust and abortion.
Under Democratic law, there is no discrimination for sexual orientation (e.g. pedophilia, sadomasochism). Some queer choices are more tolerable by the twilight fringe in progressive sects than others.
I hope Rich Lowery is right however I have not seen any evidence of the DNC leadership moving away one iota from all of their ridiculous woke policies.
Until we see new leadership instead of a repeat of Nancy pelosi in the house and Debbie Wasserman Schultz still pulling the strings from behind the curtain and Kamala Harris talking about running again in 28, the Democrats will continue down this path of irrelevance.
The progressive path and grade a.k.a. the slippery slope a.k.a. a wicked solution to hard problems.
"Donald Trump Has Broken the Progressive Ratchet."
Who you callin' "ratchet," biatch?!
- Jasmine Crockett
Communist-Soviet Mob-Democratic lying liars who lie - must face Karma and comeuppance.
I’m genuinely puzzled by Lowry’s extremely brief article. Althouse’s comments are more substantive than his. Now I think there’s probably several un- or even interrelated theories that people are calling a ratchet theory. Wisconsinites should be extra-sensitive to the concept.
The brezhnev doctrine in domestic matters
Leftist Marxist and TDS guy at Columbis evaluates things:
"So, we will address this question in these first two seminars this week through a reading of the early writings of the young Louis Altuser. We will continue, I hope, in November with some readings from the old Altuser as well as from Cogve. But you are probably wondering why I would link the Louis Altuser after the 1946-47 war with the Heritage Foundation in the United States. You couldn't think of two more heterogeneous objects of reflection, eh. So, there are three reasons, three motivations. First, we are living in a Geological era. The spirit of our times is changing. In the United States, certainly perhaps in Europe, a shift in mentality is being felt, a clear, perceptible shift to the right. We are going through a tremendous historical transformation in real time. In the United States, a modern counter-revolution has shattered liberal institutions, the former bulwark of the neoliberal establishment. Political liberalism has proven itself completely powerless in the face of a surge of right-wing populism across the world. The bastions of liberalism in the United States are falling one after the other: the legal system, academia, the media, the Democratic Party, all swept away by a wave of nationalist populist sentiment. A conservative will to power is taking the lead. Far-right coalitions are on the rise. Of course, however, they are very unstable, likely to give way to a radically new political landscape, practically unpredictable at this stage, unknowable. We could be witnessing the rise of global fascism, the consolidation of ethnonationalist enclaves, the emergence of political democracy, or perhaps the birth of new alternatives of solidarity and cooperation. But one thing is certain: we have entered a new historical era. The interregnum everyone was talking about is coming to an end. Something new is about to emerge. And so it is a very Geological period." (trans Google)
Boomers have been watching this happen and some helping the left ratchet along for their entire adult lives.
If you keep turning the ratchet in the same direction, eventually the nuts fall off.
He's made a good start, but I don't think the hideous thing is actually broken. I want the public schools shut down, for one thing. Or at least the Teachers' Unions. All government unions. Gone.
Like Obama using CAFE standards to "Nudge" automakers to install those annoying "Stop-Start" buttons. First they came with a default "off" setting; then, eventually, a default "on" setting.
Good luck bringing those back following Trump's EPA repeal of the CAFE credits in May. We have been warned.
The Dems, in general, internalize their politics and they derive their sense of morality from their politics. Politics becomes their sense of good and evil and people can never compromise with who they see as evil. It’s all very exhausting and explains all the psychosis in liberals. Michele Obama summed it up in 2008/9 by saying that Barack will never let you not think of politics and policy.
There is no deal making with people like that. The days of Reagan buying off some Dems with some road projects and pork for the district for a tax cut and a defense bill are over.
Democrats are scary in that they push policy that many of them would never want in their own lives, because fixing anything is never the real objective of their neurosis. It's just a driving need to be against conservatives, after convincing each other that the right are all genocidal Nazis that must be destroyed. With this mindset, there are no moderates on the right, none innocent, none worthy of sharing the planet.
The nuts fall off... but first the edges are mutilated and the thread is stripped.
Trump didn't break the ratchet. The Dems kept stripping threads and breaking bolts so America hired a new mechanic.
Also known as the progressive racket.
I never thought any turning back would ever happen. Never really saw it before, but Trump has gotten some done only because he is uniquely bold. I have no delusions that the left will not ratchet back at the first opportunity, which the 40% who are terminally foolish voters will reliably give them as the rest of us wonder how anyone could do that again.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
So are the nevertrumpers of NRO changing direction?
They are begging for money. They will say anything they need to keep the grift.
They got paid to be never-Trump.
They are willing to get paid to kiss Trump’s ass as well is my guess. Just worthless people in general.
“Democrats are scary in that they push policy that many of them would never want in their own lives.”
Dems who have a family or assets absolutely are conservative regarding those in the sense they will fight tooth and nail for them when threatened, they will insulate themselves from whatever the negative impact of the policies they push.
My former place of residence is filled with liberals who want all the “inclusion” everywhere but are now upset that the such inclusion means poor minorities in their schools and loss of gifted programs for their children because such programs were not “inclusive.”
Where’s Nurse Wretched on all this ratchet?
Lowery’s kind of a poor man’s Thomas Friedman inne he?
NR’s problem recently had been that all of its writers were pearl clutchers and nobody likes pearl clutchers.
Lowery is better at understanding that than many of the other writers there.
NR cannot conserve conservatism by agreeing with liberals because the dominant breed of Republican today isn’t signing up for NR cruises.
A frog in a pot with the temperature slowly increasing will eventually boil and die. Will the frog, if it is saved before it dies, ever get back in the pot?
It might be broken enough that the union for federal workers is now calling for Schumer to pass the clean CR. Reopen before the next payday. Wow didn’t realize that the cultist left here is even more hardline on giving the store away to illegal aliens than the president of the far left public employees union.
Clarifying.
If the nuts don't fall off - you can commit some crimes, go to prison for a few weeks, and have them surgically removed at tax payer expense.
Wince said... Like Obama using CAFE standards to "Nudge" automakers to install those annoying "Stop-Start" buttons. First they came with a default "off" setting; then, eventually, a default "on" setting We drive a hybrid Maverick with the ICE off feature when stopped. I know it's a special case -- being a hybrid -- but it's nearly imperceptible when the ICE begins running after launch.
Deep State + Progressive Ratchet = "Norms"
There's an op ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal likening Trump to a smash mouth hockey player. That's the sort of guy who, no matter what, will slam his opponent into the boards. After that the opponents maintain a respectful distance.
“Democrats are scary in that they push policy that many of them would never want in their own lives.”
The only policy they ever push is taking from one group, giving to a bunch of non-profits run by insiders, and watching the money disappear.
That is the totality of their "policy". Everything else is just a sales pitch to get political cover and avoid prosecution.
I recently rented a VW 6 speed manual diesel van in Ireland that had the automatic engine shutoff. At first it was disconcerting and I thought I'd somehow stalled it, but it worked pretty seamlessly even with the manual transmission. I was surprised.
Yah older folks will never accept the technology improvements that drove us out of the wet distributor cap and glow plug days. My mil keeps asking me to defeat the auto stop/start feature in her Subaru. So far I haven’t…
Wow didn’t realize that the cultist left here is even more hardline on giving the store away to illegal aliens than the president of the far left public employees union.
With the coming of redistricting and Louisiana v Callais I think the Democrat strategists see the illegals as their only hope of survival for the party and its current agenda. Switching to popular policies was/is not an available option in their minds. I’m convinced this was the long game they’ve been playing since Hillary! and there’s no plan B, hence the Thelma and Louise ‘cliff’ references of recent…
I have always heard it as the "one-way ratchet".
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
It might be broken enough that the union for federal workers is now calling for Schumer to pass the clean CR. Reopen before the next payday. Wow didn’t realize that the cultist left here is even more hardline on giving the store away to illegal aliens than the president of the far left public employees union.
Clarifying.
The democrats are set to lose 20 to 30 congressional seats if they can’t count the illegals that are padding inner city numbers.
Also billions of federal dollars are apportioned to the big blue cities based on illegals counted in the census and distributed by headcount. None of that money goes to poor people. It all goes to corrupt politicians and their corporate cronies.
This is existential for them. They will start a civil war over it.
rehajm said..."Yah older folks will never accept the technology improvements that drove us out of the wet distributor cap and glow plug days. My mil keeps asking me to defeat the auto stop/start feature in her Subaru. So far I haven’t…"
Gasoline is cheap compared to the cost of replacing starters and batteries that are overused in the auto start/stop system.
It took him a very long time, but even Lowry finally gets it.
it depends on no one ever pushing things back in the other direction
Lowry stopped short of mentioning that for decades, the Republican Party was committed to slowing the decline of America. The assumption that we were in decline wasn't questioned.
National Review stopped being interesting ten years ago, when they decided to be anti-Trump.
In 2008, NR's Jonah Goldberg wrote "Liberal Fascism". With all the current talk of fascism, Goldberg might have interesting things to say. It's too bad that nobody cares what he thinks.
Ratchet works as a good metaphor here, but so does the good ol' Overton Window.
Trump proved that there are a lot of issues in which it's possible to move the window bigly without making the sky fall or, worse, losing the support of the average American voter. To the contrary, he has shown the average American voter that politicians CAN get things done if they simply are serious about doing them. He's captured the support of a lot of normies this way, while the dems are still trying to run their age-old scam of telling voters that our country's problems are fundamentally unfixable and the best we can do is to trust DC elites on how to manage the decline.
I hate auto off. My wife’s Hyundai has it but there’s an opt out button that religiously push upon starting. If hers didn’t have all the leather and upgrades I’d rather use my car.
If you keep turning the ratchet in the same direction, eventually the nuts fall off.
Or get stuck in place.
The progressive rachet was a hatchet wielded as a scalpel with liberal license was never a viable Choice... uh, choice
R C Belaire said...
We drive a hybrid Maverick with the ICE off feature when stopped. I know it's a special case -- being a hybrid -- but it's nearly imperceptible when the ICE begins running after launch.
Very different for pure ICE cars in my experience. Coincidentally, I looked it up before and Amazon has a lot of stop-start by-pass switches... for Mavericks in particular for some reason.
I rented a Skoda minivan in France in 2017, that had the automatic shutoff. It took me a while to figure that out, and a while longer to get used to it.
No sir, I don't like it.
The cafe standards ruined engines
One reason we had "the leftwing rachet" is that people like Lowrey were heading up the Conservative opposition. By 2000, NR wasn't yelling "Stop" it was just whispering "Slow down a bit".
I dunno what NR and Lowrey were doing in 2020, but in 2016, they were A-OK with Hillary getting elected.
And Lowrey conservative always accepted the deeply held Liberal/left assumptions. So yes, they could always get NR and "True Conservatives" to approve the first baby steps of any leftwing policy.
If your only objection to mass migration of 50 million Zulus to the USA, it has to legal, then you've lost. If your only objection to Transgenders is they need to be 18, then you've lost. If your only objection to censorship and hate speech laws is they shouldn't be too draconian, you've lost.
When someone, Trump, in 2015 actually supported policies that NR and Lowrey had PRETENDED to agree with, what did they do? They "put country before party" and said "stay home don't vote, don't stop Hillary, trump is worse".
That's also why Lowrey got the Uncle tom conservative slot on the Sunday Talk shows. He'd utter a few peeps about "reasonableness" and be completely ineffectual.
As for Trump, he's not moving Left. But whether the next President will, who knows.
Who you callin' "ratchet," biatch?!
- Jasmine Crockett
I've seen the word used that way a few times now. What does it mean? Is that Ebonics eye dialect for "wretched" perhaps?
The Dem changes have a feature beloved of the federal judge population. They tend to create "reliances". These are then used as leverage to prevent reducing or eliminating programs.
See, for example, DACA.
The WSJ is always concerned with Republicans being uncivil. Never with the Democrats. Primarily because the D's don't give a shit what the WSJ thinks.
I just read that notwithstanding Trump's executive order, normal shower heads and lights using incandescent or halogen light bulbs are still essentially banned. Why? Because an EO can't override a law passed by Congress. Also, it seems that manufacturers will be reluctant to undertake the investment required to produce incandescent bulbs and fixtures, especially without some guarantee that they won't be banned again by some future D-controlled government. So there's your ratchet. Mike Lee has introduced legislation to overturn the bans, but whether it will get anywhere is anyone's guess.
The growing national debt helped. So did the realization that progressive organizations were in business for themselves and liberal politicians didn't live by what they claimed to believe. There was a realization that "pluralism" meant cobbling together interest groups to form an agenda in opposition to the national interest. In spite of DOGE, though, most of the agencies and bureaus liberals created are still around.
The "geological shift" theory is undermined by the fact that every change of decade or party in power brings a change in spirit and worldview. This may be the close of the Biden-Obama era or of the longer Clinton-Bush-Obama post-Cold War era. It's not the end of the world.
rehajm:"Lowery’s kind of a poor man’s Thomas Friedman inne he?"
I have to disagree. Thomas Friedman is the poor man's Thomas Friedman.
Poor mans lippman
Yah I meant Friedman as in the boss’ kid causing trouble sense…
It's called "salami slicing" and is the favorite trick of the neocons. You can also call it "boiling a frog," or whatever you like. It is highly effective.
"Was it an act of war to put the corrupt Marcos family back in power?"
"Well... no"
"Was it an act of war to emplace nuclear missiles that can hit China in the Philipines now that the Marcos family is back in power?"
"Well, no"
"Was it an act of war to arm Taiwan, an island from which we could enforce a naval blockade of China?"
"Well, no..."
Rinse repeat until one day: "China, You are surrounded any you have no chance, so we have some names here, pick one of them for your new premiere."
It's like being approached by a slowly moving python, and no one move seems that threatening, until it has you in its grip and you are doomed.
It's "Lowry," Altehouse.
You got that backwards tim
Trumps opponents hounded him with fake charges and lawsuits and tried to kill him twice.
Why would anyone think he would treat his political enemies any differently?
The assumption that we were in decline wasn't questioned.
I've been saying this - as well as the fact that all the Democrats' and DSA's policies seem to be "manage the decline, making it as pleasant as possible for our constituents to have less and less of everything, including hope."
They still don't understand that Trump represents NOT accepting that decline is inevitable, and people can actually get behind that message without feeling that they're craven scavengers on a dying system. (I think a lot of Democrat voters defend their positions so hard - yard signs and all - because they know that they are encouraging, or possibly taking active part in, the mothing* of society. It can't be a comfortable position to believe with almost all your heart that you're a moral and good person, but suspect in that one dark corner of your heart that everything you advocate is for short-term avoidance of pain and will lead to degradation and ruin. It must make them feel pretty strongly about defending themselves.**)
* "To moth" used here as it was interestingly explained by Thomas Harris in Silence of the Lambs - to destroy by eating away at.
** See for instance the cafe thread in which one commenter made sure everyone knew how much food s/he'd just donated to a food bank. Of course, the better course would've been to give them the money instead since they can get better prices and buy what they know they need, but that wasn't the point of telling everyone about it.
Gasoline is cheap compared to the cost of replacing starters and batteries that are overused in the auto start/stop system.
ooh lemme play too: starters and batteries are cheap compared to valves rings bearings cam shafts timing belts in engines that are overused in the not system…not that any of this is true, original or retort…
Lowry or Lowrey,
By any other name,
It would be as cucked.
Well, their minds are going through Dem changes
They feel just like committing a crime
Every time you see a protest somewhere
You know they goin' outta their minds, yeah
Throw a wrench in the ACA so hard it crashes into a ditch and burns up completely and I'll believe the premise of this post. Throw out the NFA and I'll believe Trump actually means what he says.
all they want, is to be able to marry the person they Love!
all they want, is to be able to get a wedding cake!
all they want, is to FORCE You to Make them a cake!
all they want, is to be able to claim that they are a different gender!
all they want, is to FORCE YOU to call them by a different gender!
all they want, is to be able to convince kids to change genders!
all they want, is to FORCE YOUR Childen to change genders!
all they want, is to be able to have sex with your little children!
all they want, is to FORCE your childrent have sex with them!
somewhere along the line.. they stripped the threads.
Hassayamper, from wiki
Ratchet is a slang term in American hip hop culture that, in its original sense, was a derogatory term used to refer to an uncouth woman, and may be a Louisianan dialect form of the word "wretched". In the 2000s–2010s, the word became loosely connotative of denoting overt confidence, defiance, fervor, or otherwise being descriptive of actions displaying boisterous and unruly behavior when attributed to a person. It is primarily used in street slang and is popular among African American women.
People take the status-quo for granted. Unless you can feeze time, there is no status-quo. The UK thought Brexit would last forever. They found out the hard way.
If it was a Craftsman, is the warranty still good?
Progressive Ratchet would be a good name for a band.
The general mood of the country may be shifting rightward, but there are more cities run by savages than ever before.
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