"Is the United States Creating a ‘Legion of Doom’?/The emerging China-Russia-Iran axis may force the United States to choose between some unappealing options."

 Asks Daniel Drezner (at Politico).

"I wrote four columns per week on average. If one thinks of those as simple blog posts, perhaps that does not seem like too heavy a lift."

"Over time, however, Spoiler Alerts morphed from being a blog to being much more like a column.... The tone of Spoiler Alerts became less irreverent and more, dare I say, mature.... A lot has happened over the past eight years... I found a few ways of writing about some of this with a bemused tone, but there were limits. The biggest driver for this change, however, is probably a less forgiving public sphere. As I have noted before, Spoiler Alerts was a form of 'contingent writing'.... We live in an age in which retweeting a tasteless joke and then apologizing and deleting it 10 minutes later still winds up being on your permanent record. Not all infractions are equal, and in some cases such behavior merits serious sanctions. There is something bizarre, however, about the capricious nature of reactions and overreactions to acts that less than a decade ago would barely have merited a shrug. It is entirely possible that as a middle-aged straight White guy, my read on this is wrong. Another trend I have noticed over the past eight years is that my inner cranky-old-man voice is starting to get louder. I am keenly aware that this voice is not always wrong, but it ain’t always right, either."

Writes Daniel Drezner, in "Goodbye, farewell and adieu to Spoiler Alerts/R.I.P. Spoiler Alerts, 2014-2022" (WaPo). "Spoiler Alerts" was the name of his column, which wasn't placed very conspicuously in the Washington Post, I don't think, because I read the Post every day, and I hadn't blogged anything by Drezner in years. 

The Post is ending his column, and he's trying to explain or come to terms with this. 

Just when Trump is calling the Democrats "crazy," we get some loonily angry outbursts from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.

Is this ludicrous theatricality as a cynical tactic to get attention in the Era of Twitter or are they really this unsteady and short on self-control?

Wow.
Pelosi is unhinged.
She just completely snapped. pic.twitter.com/x3wELO6WHo

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) December 5, 2019

Watch Joe Biden’s tense exchange with a voter in Iowa who accuses him of selling access to the White House with his son in Ukraine and being too old for the presidency
pic.twitter.com/dn49FyVW0j

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 5, 2019

MEANWHILE: There's some talk about making Trump crazy:

This seems like a pretty good ad in that: a) Biden has been hammering away at this theme; and b) It will drive Trump crazy. https://t.co/5mqt0Mz9hy

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 5, 2019

AND: Here's where Trump is calling them "crazy":

The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House. They have no Impeachment case and are demeaning our Country. But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy. Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2019

ALSO: It sure seems to me as though Biden calls that man "fat." Why is Biden yelling at that guy? He's asking a question that Biden should be prepared to answer briskly and soundly. There's zero reason to go off on the man.

PLUS: Biden did the same thing back in 1988 — challenged a citizen interlocutor to an IQ test:

Dan Drezner tells Mickey Kaus he's out of his depth.

Mickey please stick to immigration as you’re more than a bit out of your depth here. https://t.co/PnxdaMcRc0

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 12, 2019

You be the judge. Pick the option closest to your reaction.

Drezner's right and he said it right. Kaus is out of his depth.

Drezner was rude and (ironically) shallow, but Kaus *is* wrong.

Kaus is apt and funny and Drezner's attempt at wit is an embarrassing cliché.

Both men are being shallow and meaningless in social media. Bleh!!

 

pollcode.com free polls

Camp.

At what stage of life does one acquire a “camp”? https://t.co/XTtiC3JfX0

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 8, 2019

I'm interested in the language question — "camp" — but it's also a good time to mention the possible newcomers to the Democratic primary race — not just Michael Bloomberg but Eric Holder. Newsweek has this:

Eugene Robinson claimed on social media last night that the Obama-era attorney general had spoken with strategists about running in the already crowded Democratic 2020 primary field.... The analyst's claim was also repeated on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show yesterday evening, following several reports that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also considering pitching himself against frontrunners Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders....

[Rachel Maddow] said: "If Eric Holder is in the mix, and Mike Bloomberg looks like he might be in the mix, well jeez, just when you thought it's all over, it's never over."

What's the latest anyone ever entered the race and went on to become the nominee? Have we ever seen anything like this huge collection of candidates in one party where no one seems to have decent support? (Biden has been in the lead for a long time, but he seems to represent the idea I'm here waiting for a standard-model Democrat who reminds me of the old days when Obama was President.)

On the language question, a "camp" is "A body of troops encamping and moving together; an army on a campaign." I'd say you have a camp when you are organized to do battle. You've got a metaphorical army. And it's got to be on the move to be called a "camp." If it's a camp, you've got a campaign. Ergo, he's running. Or people are using the wrong word.

Impeaching Trump now = conceding the 2020 election.

That's my working theory. I don't know if the Democrats in Congress will go so far as to impeach Trump, but I tend to think that if they do, it will be because they think they're going to lose the election and they need another route toward defeating Trump.

Of course, if Trump is impeached by the Democrats who have a majority in the House, he will not be removed from office, because the Republicans control the Senate. We'll be subjected to a horrific blend of legal mystification and political advantage seeking.

So why would the Democrats predict that it will advantage them? My answer is: because they feel sure they're losing the actual election, the straightforward political fight.

The timing is important. They could wait for the actual election, the normal process of American democracy, or — if they think that won't work — they can start delegitimatizing it now, while they think they have a decent shot at making us believe they're doing something righteous and noble. If they wait too long, the con will become more obvious.

Now, I'm going to read the Daniel W. Drezner column, "The strategic case for impeaching President Trump/Welcome to some zero-sum game theory" (WaPo), which I think may say something like what I wanted to jot down before being influenced:

Pelosi thinks that impeachment needs to be a bipartisan process, and without GOP support impeachment is a hollow threat that would harm Democrats in 2020....

So, as long the Democrats think they can win the actual election, they shouldn't hurt their chances by going for impeachment.

For most of 2019, Pelosi had put the brakes on impeachment. The Ukraine business seems to have tipped the scales, however.... The problem is that Pelosi’s risk-averse political calculus at the start of 2019 has not necessarily changed. Very few Senate Republicans beyond Mitt Romney have said anything about the recent revelations. It is entirely possible that impeachment will be viewed as simply an exercise in partisan politics.

And it's entirely certain that impeachment will be viewed as partly an exercise in partisan politics. And 80% likely that it will be viewed as mostly an exercise in partisan politics.

Drezner offers game theory analysis:

In zero-sum games, one actor’s gain is always the other actor’s loss. The optimal strategy to pursue in this instance is called “minimax.” A minimax strategy anticipates that the other actor will adopt the most punishing strategy possible — and, in response to that strategy, takes the course of action that minimizes the damage....

It is safe to assume that Trump will continue to abuse the powers of the presidency as long as he is in office.... Would impeachment stop any of that? No, not directly. What it would do, however, is distract the heck out of him....  [H]e will obsess about it... He will rant to his... 

He's inept and dangerous, so let's make his job twice as hard. You know, we are dependent on him to do his job well. I have never accepted the effort to distract and confuse him, which has gone on since before he took office. And why don't people see that the endless screwing with him energizes him? He's very creative at repurposing negativity. He seems to revel in the fight. And to many Americans, that's exciting entertainment, and they feel they're cheering the underdog.

He loves a fight.

Yeah, I agree with that. But Drezner stops at thinking Trump will be distracted and imagines this will help the country because distracted Trump won't pay so much attention to doing his job as President.

That's how Drezner wants the Democrats to help?! First, that's a disgusting approach to running the country, and it's utter disrespect for the people who used their normal democratic power of voting him into office. And second, the Democrats will be distracting themselves from what they really need to be doing — winning the 2020 election.

Which is why my working theory makes more sense. The Democrats would be deciding that they won't win the 2020 election — an affront to democracy.

I'm sticking to my theory, which — it turned out — isn't anything like what Drezner had to say.

"Trump actually congratulated Erdogan on the outcome."

"Trump apparently thought it was a good thing that, despite all the flaws in the process, a bare majority of Turkey’s citizens voted to strengthen their populist leader. I don’t think any other post-Cold War president would have congratulated a democratic ally that held a flawed referendum leading to a less democratic outcome. This is not that far off from Trump congratulating Putin on a successful referendum result in Crimea if that event had been held in 2017 rather than 2014."

Writes Dan Drezner.

"If you’re writing thousands of words a day, then don’t check your phone, don’t clean up your office, don’t spend inordinate amounts of time on food, and sleep only when you must."

"Apologize to your significant other that you are so distracted — but between the two of us, it’s really a #sorrynotsorry kind of moment."

From Dan Drezner's "So you want to write a nonfiction book/A few tips for those writers intimidated by the idea of writing something that contains many pages and a spine" at WaPo. It might be very good advice because Drezner has written 6 nonfiction books.

I have more than 6 unwritten nonfiction books, and I'm ever more committed to doing only unwritten books when I read Drezner's point #4: "Ration your social media.... the time suck of these platforms is considerable. Only let yourself go on it for small segments of time, or as a reward for finishing an intermediary goal." I'm a blog supremacist, so I reverse-engineer that advice into do not become distracted by long writing projects. They'll ruin your blog mind.

By the way, I love the illustration at the link, with the caption: "Still life of girl sitting on floor and writing in a notebook. (iStock))" That girl is not writing a nonfiction book. But I identify with her because she looks like she might be jotting down some blogging ideas.

"... Ann Coulter writes the following words on page 3 of her new book about how Trump is awesome: 'there’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies.'"

"Given Trump’s gyrations on immigration this week, this is such an unfortunate sentence. It leads to sad headlines like, 'Trump Betrayal of Ann Coulter Timed Perfectly to Release of Ann Coulter Book About Always Trusting Trump' and sad pictures of Coulter steeling herself to give book talks and angry Coulter tweets at Trump.... Like Rush Limbaugh (words I never thought I would type in that order), my first reaction upon hearing that sentence was [hysterical laughter]. Watching Coulter go through the five stages of grief in the span of 24 hours has also been a gift from the schadenfreude gods. Yet as Coulter has finally arrived at the realization that she can’t abandon Trump, I can’t fully commit to savoring her discomfort...."

Writes Dan Drezner (at WaPo) in "Ann Coulter is currently experiencing every nonfiction author’s nightmare/Sympathy for the devil in Prada."

One more reason to blog instead of writing a book.

But I'm not sure Coulter is a big loser here. Her book is getting a lot of attention because people who love to hate her see a hilariously colossal clash between her book — "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!" — and Trump's supposed "softening." There's so much more reason now to bring her on the shows — where she can continue to promote herself — than there might have been if this was just another book by Ann Coulter. There are so many! Don't all the liberal (and conservative) show hosts want to needle her about her dramatic experience in publishing timing. And suddenly she's leveraged as the expert on how Trumpsters feel when he flips on their favorite issue.

"There are two big problems in trying to analyze Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy speech."

Says Dan Drezner (at The Washington Post). The first is — as I suspect you know — it was mainly an attack on Donald Trump. He's "dangerously incoherent," etc. We get it, but what does that tell us about Clinton's foreign policy?

The second big problem is: "Commentators are already saying that Clinton is to the right of Trump on foreign policy, following up on previous pundit claims that Clinton is more hawkish than Trump on matters of national security." But according to Drezner, "hawk-dove distinctions" don't "really work" and are "pretty useless." He seems to like the idea of replacing "hawk" and "dove" with Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jacksonian, and Jeffersonian. In this set-up, Trump gets Jackson and Hillary gets both Wilson and Hamilton.

The political scientist's idea that the reason the GOP elite didn't stop Trump is because they bought into the political science that said Trump couldn't win.

An interesting column in WaPo by Dan Drezner that relies heavily on a (somewhat iffy) analogy to the declining success of pitch framing in baseball. It used to work for a catcher to position himself to make a ball look like a strike, but then baseball analysts observed and explained the phenomenon, and the umpires — made aware — stopped letting the catchers fool them into calling strikes.

How does the analogy work? Political scientists correspond to the baseball analysts. The GOP elite corresponds to the umpires. That's a bit off, because in baseball there really is a strike zone and the umpire knows he's supposed to see where it really is, and the positioning of the catcher's mitt is not a proper factor in the decision. The umpires understood that they were doing their job wrong and managed to exclude the distraction.

In the primary, what corresponds to the truth of the strike zone and the need for the umpire not to be influenced by something that shouldn't play a part in his decision-making? In baseball, the strike zone is the position of the ball as it crosses the plate in relation to the batter's body, so I guess the strike zone is the position of the voter's head on election day in relation to a particular candidate.

But the GOP elite is only trying to predict where that head will be, not calling it as it happens, and it is trying to influence the voter's mind by spending money and making various arguments. Drezner's point is that the GOP elite didn't spend enough and attack Trump enough because they were fooled into thinking the voter's mind on election day wouldn't be anywhere near voting for Trump.

Drezner makes some sense, even though the analogy is off. What if the political scientists had done better analysis and shown that Trump in fact had an excellent chance? The GOP elite would, the theory goes, have seen the need to attack Trump with great force. But the GOP elite isn't like the umpire. The umpire can start to see the ball where it really is and start calling balls and strikes correctly. The GOP elite, with better political science analysis, would know it doesn't like where the voter's head is, but it couldn't solve the problem by stating the correct location. Unlike an umpire, it has a preference in the election/game. It wants to change the location of those heads.

I think if the GOP elite had the power to move those heads, we'd be seeing powerfully effective anti-Trump ads by now. Where are they? 

"But to suggest that this Senate report will really tip the scales when it comes to the United States’ enemies rallying support..."

"... you have to believe that the following exchange is happening somewhere in the Middle East."

Intro to a dialog between "Abdul" and "Ahmed," imagined by international politics prof Dan Drezner.

Newt + Obama = the largest possible "how smart they think they are" minus "how smart they really are"...

... according to Dan Drezner.

"I think they're both actually reasonably intelligent guys, but I think both of them have a much higher opinion of themselves than they actually are."

Okay. Hmmm. Can you think of any other pair of individuals with a greater self-esteem/merit gap when it comes to intelligence?

In my experience — and I'm old, so it's long — people who make a noticeable exhibition of their smartness are not the most intelligent people. They're not the dumbest people. But the smartest people are strategic about displaying intelligence. That's how they outsmart you.

Megan McArdle's big lie.

"Read Bono's column and, in 20 words or less, explain its theme."

Says Dan Drezner, who thinks the column is insufferable nonsense, and enters his own contest with: "Did you know that I knew Frank Sinatra?"

I'll enter the contest: Art is in the moment.

***

Here is yesterday's post on the Bono column.

"If I say 'F#$% Kevin Martin and the horse he rode in on,' am I obviously encouraging rape and bestiality?"

Asked Dan Drezner, quoted by Language Log's Geoff Nunberg in his post about the oral argument in the Supreme Court case about "fleeting expletives" in the broadcast media. (Kevin Martin is the FCC chairman who favors fees for the broadcasters.) Nunberg examines the serious linguistic question whether it's true, as Martin said, that "the F-word 'inherently has a sexual connotation' whenever it's used."

Emphatic fucking may not depict or refer to sex, and may not even bring it explicitly to mind. But the link is still there. Why would these uses of the word be considered "dirty" if they weren't polluted by its primary literal use? And what could be the original source of that taint if not the word's literal denotation (or at least, of its denotation relative to the attitudes that obscene words presuppose about sex and the body)? In fact if fuck and fucking weren't connected to sex in all their secondary uses, they would serve no purpose at all.

Isn't it what we call a "dying metaphor"? The classic reference is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language":

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying.

I think that applies to what Nunberg calls "emphatic fucking," a phrase which makes me think Nunberg wasn't interested in all the meanings of what he was saying or (more likely) Nunberg meant to amuse us with a vivid image as he wielded linguistic jargon.

Now it's very easy to conclude that the indignation that some people feel over the promiscuous use of epithetical fucking and the like is a reflection of their prudish inhibitions about sexuality, and that embracing the language helps to dispel those attitudes. As George Carlin put it, "There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions." That was an article of faith among a the faction among the sixties radicals who made sexual liberation an inseparable part of their political programs. As Jerry Rubin put it:

There's one word which Amerika hasn't destroyed. One word which has maintained its emotional power and purity. Amerika cannot destroy it because she dare not use it. It's illegal! It's the last word left in the English language: FUCK!

The naked human body is immoral under Christianity and illegal under Amerikan law. Nudity is called "indecent exposure." Fuck is a dirty word because you have to be naked to do it.

I think most cultural liberals still uncritically adopt a version of this understanding of the words. When they uphold people's right to use this sort of language in public against the attempts to censor or limit it, they think of themselves not just as defending free speech, but as striking a blow against sexual repression and hypocrisy. That is, they see themselves as being in a line that stretches back to the Lady Chatterly decision....

But if it ever were possible to purge fuck of its literal stigma by eliminating the inhibitions and hangups that the word seems to trail, the secondary uses of the word would lose their raison d'etre....

[W]e should acknowledge that the words are suffused with an affect that's derived from their sexual meanings.

The metaphor is not dead for Nunberg, and I think he wants to keep it alive. The word is good and useful because the metaphorical meaning still lives. Now, Nunberg was born in 1945. That's a lot older than Drezner. For Drezner, the word must seem much more casual and ordinary, more common and also less powerful. Nunberg appreciates the power that comes from sex, power that Drezner probably doesn't feel.

In Orwell's words: "the concrete melts into the abstract."

McCain "needs to make an opponent an enemy in his mind to kind of get up for this. He personalizes conflict..."

That's WaPo's Eugene Robinson, responding to Chris Matthews, who's fulminating about McCain's supposed contempt for Obama:



I was watching the debate on a channel that mainly had a split screen of the 2 men head on, so it was hard for me to discern the level of interaction. But I do think McCain had a strategy of intimidating Obama and making him feel small and inexperienced.

And, frankly, Robinson is right! McCain does personalize conflict. He has such a dramatic and profound personal story, and he's made it the foundation of his rhetoric. He uses it to reinforce his credibility and to add weight to all his opinions. It's not surprising that when he came to face Obama in person that he thought he could make the other man doubt himself. Who am I to stand next to this man?

Or -- whatever he could make Obama think -- at least he could make us see him as the greater man, but he risked the kind of criticism Robinson and Matthews dished out.

Josh Marshall quotes a reader:

As a psychotherapist and someone who treats people with anger management problems, we typically try to educate people that anger is often an emotion that masks other emotions. I think it's significant that McCain didn't make much, if any, eye contact because it suggests one of two things to me; he doesn't want to make eye contact because he is prone to losing control of his emotions if he deals directly with the other person, or, his anger masks fear and the eye contact may increase or substantiate the fear.

I noticed him doing the same thing in the Republican primary debates. The perception observers are likely to have is that he is unwilling to acknowledge the opponent's legitimacy and/or is contemptuous of the opponent.

He also knows his opponent would like to get him to display anger and confirm the theory that he's angry man and he's defending against that tactic.

(Hey, do you know the difference between a tactic and a strategy? "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy." If you don't, you're not fit to stand on the stage next to John McCain, who's been through tactics and strategies all over the world over half a century.)

Marshall quotes another reader:

I think people really are missing the point about McCain's failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear -- look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior -- low ranking monkeys don't look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.

Dan Drezner says:

Ah, the perceived slights. Josh Marshall highlights McCain’s unwillingness to make eye contact with Obama. I would say that McCain evinced some disregard for Obama — but I’m not buying the “low-ranking monkey” hypothesis (seriously, I can’t believe Josh posted this). McCain was not afraid of Obama — he just doesn’t like him.

Indeed. We are animals, with animal instincts worth noting, but it is a rule of polite discourse that when racial difference is anywhere in the picture, you don't compare human beings to apes or monkeys.

"A morass that starts out as a quagmire, then morphs into a cesspool and finally turns into a slime pit on the road to its ultimate destination."

Joe Queenan explains — at some length — exactly what it takes for a movie to be the worst movie ever made. And by that standard, something like "The Hottie and the Nottie" isn't even in the running. To be truly bad, at the very least, important people had to have worked very hard making something that they believed was going to be quite profoundly wonderful.

Link via Dan Drezner, who thinks the worst movie he's seen, by Queenan's standard, is "Caligula." Queenan adheres to the "Heaven's Gate" school of thought.

ADDED: In other news: "Lindsay Lohan to star in new Charles Manson movie."

I just noticed that Dan Drezner called something "the Ann Althouse" idea.

In this segment of a Bloggingheads episode. [NOTE: You have to click on the segment titled "The dark side of libertarianism."] I don't think he gets it quite right, and I don't know why they talk about me by name but don't include anything I wrote in the sidebar list of links. But they're talking about Ron Paul's racist newsletter, and they refer back to the dispute I had with Reason Magazine libertarians. Drezner characterizes me as saying that if you believe in something — like libertarianism — that in the past was associated with something repugnant — like racism — you remain tainted by it.

I think my point is finer: If you believe in something that was once associated with something repugnant, you ought to care about demonstrating to people that your profession of belief in the idea is not a cover for something repugnant. A Reason Magazine editor subjected me to a haughty show of indignation because I wanted to see that demonstration: How dare I demand that anyone prove he's not a racist! But I'm saying that the fact that you don't care about disaggregating your philosophy from racism says something that matters.

By the way, Dan Drezner was quite disrespectful to me in the past about this, so I'm surprised to see that he remembers. Frankly, I'm surprised he even credits me with the capacity to have something he would call an "idea."

ADDED: Actually, I think he calls it the "the Ann Althouse question" — not idea. And, as reader_iam points out in the comments, Drezner isn't the one who brings up my name, his diavlog partner Henry Farrell does (at about 5:04). I should add that there is an old Bloggingheads — which I'm not going to dig up now — where Farrell and Drezner talk about me and Farrell is insulting — saying that he doesn't like my blog and doesn't get any ideas from it. That insult was over a year ago, I think, as was his encounter with the idea of mine that he still remembers!

AND: Here's the thing I wasn't able to dig up before. The exact clip of Henry Farrel saying he doesn't like my blog.

"It's apparently endorsement season in the blogosphere."

Writes Dan Drezner, reflecting on Andrew Sullivan's endorsement of Ron Paul. (Note: For the Republican nomination. Sullivan endorsed Barack Obama on the Democratic side, so... do the math.)

Do you want your bloggers endorsing candidates? Perhaps some, but not all. I don't see myself as the candidate-endorsing sort of blogger.