I love the way RCP just alternates pro- and anti-Trump headlines. I'll just check in on one of each:
"The Reason The Left Loves Riots/Is Because It Hates Civilization," asserts Michael Shellenberger: "It's 'inflammatory' to enforce migration laws, say Democrats. But it's not. It's essential for protecting the vulnerable. The reason the Left opposes law enforcement is that they take pleasure at the destruction of civilization, at least so long as it only hurts other people."
"We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state," warns Robert Reich: "As civilian control gives way to military control, the nation splits into those who are most vulnerable to it and those who support it. The dictatorship entrenches itself by fomenting fear and anger on both sides. These are frightening and depressing times. But remember: although it takes one authoritarian to establish a police state, it takes just 3.5% of a population to topple him and end it."
That link on "3.5%" goes to a definition "the 3.5% rule": "Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change." Reich is hoping 3.5% of Americans will take to the streets — peacefully and patriotically — and "topple" the duly elected President.
Both Shellenberger and Reich say they're for peace, and both also say that they believe the other side is out for violence.
Theories rejected by Reich: 1. The polls are skewed against Harris, 2. Media make it look close for ratings, 3. Voters think Trump is better on economic matters.
Theories Reich entertains: 1. Voters know all about Trump and don't know much about Harris (Trump is "the devil they know"), 2... oh! #1 is the only theory he likes. The rest is just inferring that Trump, who can't change and is know, is working to prevent Harris from becoming more known.
Trump's methods for keeping us from learning more about Harris: 1. Declining to debate her again. 2. Creating chaos (and thereby turning people away from politics), and 3. Running ads that provide negative information about Harris (e.g., pointing out that she supported "gender transition surgery for incarcerated people").
If Reich has the right theory for why Harris is falling behind, why doesn't he call on her to make herself better known? She could do serious interviews and press conferences instead of lightweight fluff. The sensible presumption is that she is choosing to avoid revealing depth and substance. It is, in fact, rational to guess that she and her advisers have determined that the pure state of being NOT TRUMP is her best option. People wouldn't like what she'd reveal if she laid her cards on the table. To blame Trump for her predicament is to conceive of her as a passive, ineffectual person, which is to say utterly unsuited to the presidency.
My bet is that Reich knows all that but is just making another column out of how much he hates Trump.
"He’s damaged our country in ways that may take a generation to undo. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. The politician I'm referring to is Mitch McConnell.... He’s been a truly awful public official. McConnell has always put party above America. Remember when he said his most important goal as Senate leader was to make Barack Obama a one-term president? The fact that he hasn’t always kissed Trump’s backside has infuriated the former furor-in-chief. Despite his opposition to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — admitting publicly that Trump 'provoked' the attack on the U.S. Capitol — McConnell voted to acquit Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021...."
I'm not agreeing with this, just calling attention to it for its harsh language and for Reich's drawing of Mitch McConnell, which is quite nice.
And then there's "furor-in-chief." Did he mean Führer-in-chief? "Führer," which means leader, is strongly associated with Hitler. "Furor" refers to an emotional state, not to a person. It means "fury, rage, madness, anger, mania" (OED). Maybe saying Trump was the "furor-in-chief" is like calling Aguirre the "Wrath of God"...
"... because they can’t afford travel to a blue state to get an abortion.
They’re also hurt by the failure of red states to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act; by red state de facto segregation in public schools; and by red state measures to suppress votes. One answer is for Democratic administrations and congresses in Washington to prioritize the needs of the red state poor and make extra efforts to protect the civil and political rights of people of color in red states....
Blue states have a potential role here. They should spend additional resources on the needs of red state residents, such as Oregon is now doing for people from outside Oregon who seek abortions.... California already bars anyone on a state payroll (including yours truly, who teaches at UC Berkeley) from getting reimbursed for travel to states that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.
Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights).... The open question is like the one faced by every couple that separates: how will the two find ways to be civil toward each other?"
Does this deserve my tag "civility bullshit"? It's a close call. I'll add it because now I'm talking about it, but I don't think Reich deserves it, because he is calling for his own side to be civil. Those who click on that headline will probably mostly be people who are hot for battle and hating their adversary and — because it's Reich and The Guardian and because of the incipient overruling of Roe v. Wade — on the left.
I hear Reich saying settle down and think of specific, practical things that can be done through the ordinary processes of government, which include, in the United States, federalism. Let's take a moment to sneer at federalism — AKA "states rights" — and then let's calm down and diligently use it.
"Large-scale war, if it ever comes to that, deadens reform. The first world war brought the progressive era to a halt. The second ended FDR’s New Deal. Vietnam stopped Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
Wars and the threat of wars also legitimate huge military expenditures and giant military bureaucracies. America is already spending $776bn a year on the military, a sum greater than the next 10 giant military powers (including Russia and China) together. Wars also create fat profits for big corporations in war industries.
The possibility of war also distracts the public from failures of domestic politics, as the Spanish-American war did for President William McKinley and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did for George W Bush. (Hopefully, Biden’s advisers aren’t thinking this way.)"
"Trump had that effect on Republicans. Before Trump, Lindsey Graham was almost a normal human being. Then Trump directed a huge amp of national attention Graham’s way, transmogrifying the senator into a bizarro creature who’d say anything Trump wanted to keep the attention coming.
Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. Most lie on an ego spectrum ranging from mildly inflated to pathological.
Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. Once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did last week: shafting American democracy."
"Ronald Reagan portrayed Black, inner-city mothers as freeloaders and con artists, repeatedly referring to 'a woman in Chicago' as the 'welfare queen.'... And the tension between the working class and the poor was easily exploited: Why should 'they' get help for not working when 'we' get no help, and we work?
By the time Clinton campaigned for president, 'ending welfare as we knew it' had become a talisman of so-called New Democrats, even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs....
Yet when COVID hit, public assistance was no longer necessary just for 'them.' It was needed by 'us.'... The CARES Act, which [Trump] signed into law at the end of March, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000... But the real game changer... is the breadth of Biden's plan.... Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this bill unites them in its sheer expansiveness... Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill... The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
Getting worse? Really? Seems to me things have calmed way down. But here comes Robert Reich (in The Guardian) to rile people back up into the hysteria we're supposed to maintain even though not much has happened. He leads with Sharpiegate, though Sharpiegate is a monument to how little can be found to throw at Trump these days.
What to do? We can vote him out of office in 14 months’ time. But he could end the world in seven and a half seconds. There’s also the question of whether he’ll willingly leave. Can you imagine the lengths he will go to win? Will he get Russia to do more dirty work? Instruct the justice department to arrest his opponent? Issue an executive order banning anyone not born in the US from voting? Start another war?
Reich's imaginationland is pretty weird. But I guess articles like this need to be written. There's a market for it. I wonder how big, though. Personally, I've never liked Trump (other than that I enjoy his humor and jolliness), but the Trumpophobes are worse — more "seriously, frighteningly, dangerously unstable." They'd do better to settle down and work on getting a Democratic Party candidate who isn't scarier than Trump.
Meanwhile, I feel like withdrawing. Maybe go play some records.
"There’s rumors that they actually were right-wingers. They were a part of a kind of group that was organized and ready to create the kind of tumult and danger you saw that forced the police to cancel the event. So Donald Trump, when he says Berkeley doesn’t respect free speech rights, that’s a complete distortion of the truth.”
“You think it’s a strategy by [Milo Yiannopoulos] or right-wingers?” asked host Don Lemon.
“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Reich said. “I saw these people. They all looked very– almost paramilitary. They were not from the campus. I don’t want to say factually, but I’ve heard there was some relationship here between these people and the right-wing movement that is affiliated with Breitbart News.”
Yes, they did look "almost paramilitary." Here's a description:
Black-clad protesters wearing masks threw commercial-grade fireworks and rocks at police. Some even hurled Molotov cocktails that ignited fires. They also smashed windows of the student union center on the Berkeley campus where the Yiannopoulos event was to be held.
They wore masks. It's ludicrous to say "I have never seen them before" when you are talking about people who hid their faces with masks.
How can you say they were from the "outside" and "not from the campus" when you can't see who they are? Even if you could see the faces, how could you know if you were looking at students? Reich may be a Berkeley professor, but there are over 38,000 students at Berkeley. He can't recognize them all.
Is he relying on some sort of stereotype of what Berkeley students look like?
That's a microaggression against students who don't look like the stereotype.
Although Reich went to Yale Law School — he's currently a professor not of law but public policy — he does not use weaseling language to say something without saying anything. That makes it easier to cry "fake news" on him as he wafts his theory.
But that doesn't mean his theory is wrong. It might be true. It's interesting to hear a person of the left say "outside agitators."
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely."...
I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in."...
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here....
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.
The last time I looked Berkeley was inside the United States.
The Clinton-era Labor Secretary, present-day Berkeley professor presents this as a recent conversation over breakfast. In the new fake-news, fact-challenged America, you're on your own to invent your own ideas about where this belongs on the continuum from verbatim to enhanced storytelling to wishful-thinking fiction:
Him: Trump is no Republican. He’s just a big fat ego. Me: Then why didn’t you speak out against him during the campaign? Him: You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot. Me: So what now? What are your former Republican colleagues going to do? Him (smirking): They’ll play along for a while. Me: A while? Him: They’ll get as much as they want – tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare – and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything. Me: And then what? Him (laughing): They like Pence. Me: What do you mean? Him: Pence is their guy. They all think Trump is out of his mind. Me: So what? Him: So the moment Trump does something really dumb – steps over the line – violates the law in a big stupid clumsy way… and you know he will ... Me: They impeach him? Him: You bet. They pull the trigger.
ADDED: What, in Trumpworld, would count as "big stupid clumsy"? And what, after all the liberal lawprofessorly manipulations of Obamaworld, would count as violating the law?
Hey, Reich is a pretty good cartoonist. He's especially good at making all his characters look pissed off. Did he really draw what it looks like he's drawing? I'm not trying to generate skepticism about possibly feigned, marginal drawing talent. I'm really just commenting on how dispiritingly ugly those people he wants us to be are. Maybe he does do his own drawings. This makes it look as though he does. Good for him.
Here's Michael Moore promoting the 100 days of obstruction:
Here's the 12-point list in simple text if you prefer reading.
It's puzzling, isn't it? It raises more questions than it answers, and yet she must think it was worthwhile to say.
1. There was a time when Hillary Clinton presented herself as the continuation of Obama, to generate some early onset nostalgia for the last 8 years. Now — at the risk of seeming to reject Obama (and the economic success he represents) — she's leveraging herself on another man, Bill Clinton. It's something she does, point to that man she's associated with. We like him, don't we? He's likeable more than enough.
“Hillary Clinton’s statement that if elected president she’d put Bill Clinton ‘in charge of revitalizing the economy … because, you know, he knows how to do it’ suggests she’s no longer touting the successes of the Obama economy, or even linking herself to it,” said Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration who endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary.
2. Why should Bill Clinton be "in charge of revitalizing the economy"? The economy is our biggest concern, and "in charge" puts him in the central role. What is the argument that he's the man for that job? He knows how to do it. That seems to be based on nothing but hope that we remember a good economy during the Clinton years, but not everyone remembers those years, and those of us who do may not have any idea what Bill Clinton did that worked, and what worked back then might not be what would work now.
[T]outing the economic prosperity he oversaw... could open Mrs. Clinton up to further attacks by Mr. Trump... who has campaigned as an economic populist [and has] hit Mrs. Clinton over her husband’s trade policies, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Clinton signed into law in 1993 and which many voters believe hurt American workers.
4. She's offering to be the woman President and she's pointing at her husband. Her whole career has been leveraged on Bill Clinton. Forefronting him now exposes her present neediness as well as her past dependence. It's not a good look for her.
5. Bill Clinton appears to be an old, frail man. Let him grow old gracefully. He's term-limited out of the presidency, and he would be the first First Gentleman. Let him have the dignified, supportive role as we've seen in First Ladies (other than that time Hillary Clinton took over health care reform and things worked out so badly).
Here's a close-up on the photograph at the link. It's oddly confusing which hand is Bill's:
The vigorous pointing hand seems to go with his face, but that's the hand of the young lady right behind him who looks like she's thinking Hey, I'm touching Bill Clinton's hand. Bill's is that startlingly long and emaciated hand to which all the other hands reach.
And, by the way, do you remember the good times of the Bill Clinton Administration? Good times never seemed so good. I'd be inclined to believe they never would.
Now, we're reminiscing about President Kennedy. (That song was about Caroline Kennedy, you know.)
Writes James Taranto, after Robert Reich claims to have an "old friend who has been active in politics for more than 30 years" who says he's "giving up," because he "can't stomach what's going on in Washington anymore."
Disgusted Imaginary Friend has "better things to do with my life."
What are your imaginary friends — human and mollusk — saying about the mess in Washington?
Robert Reich hyperventilates. There's a lot of that going on lately from the Obama side, and it's hard not to read that as a sign that Romney will win.
It has been said there is no high ground in American politics since any politician who claims it is likely to be gunned down by those firing from the trenches. That’s how the Obama team justifies its decision to endorse a super PAC that can raise and spend unlimited sums for his campaign.
Seems like a pretty damned good justification to me. But not to Reich.
[W]ould refusing to be corrupted this way really amount to unilateral disarmament? To the contrary, I think it would have given the President a rallying cry that nearly all Americans would get behind....
... Mr. Reich continued his musings on the Capra-like scene. “Not ‘Capra corn’ exactly,” he said. “Mark and Gabby do embody American values. They thrive on doing the people’s work.”
Actually, when I decided I was going to blog this little interview, I planned to feature this line about why our drilling for more oil isn't a good solution to high gas prices:
When you consider that the oil we pump goes into a global oil market, offshore drilling makes no sense. We take the environmental risk, but we’d have to share the negligible price gains with Chinese consumers and every other user around the world.
He's right about that, isn't he? I love the way lefties sometimes get bracingly chauvinistic. Suddenly, it's screw the rest of the world!
Oh, I know... the gains are only negligible anyway. But read the whole interview. Reich is obviously happy that the high gas prices are pushing people into mass transit at long last. If the environment is your primary concern, of course you don't want more domestic drilling, and, what's more, you welcome the high gas prices that make people consume less.
I'm calling Reich a lefty, but I note that he lives in Berkeley (where he's a professor of public policy) and he says "here I am on the right of most arguments."
And this is good. He's asked about whether he dated the college-age Hillary Clinton:
To call it a date is an exaggeration. She and I went out to see Antonioni’s “Blow-Up.” The only thing I remember is that she wanted what seemed to me to be an extraordinary amount of butter on her popcorn.
Yes, very tasty! Yes! I like it! I like it! Go on!
You know, if a woman indicates she wants extra butter, that means something:
Only an economist could go on a date and study trends in butter consumption. Isn’t that a kind of wonky thing to remember?
Yes, it is. I recall the extra butter costing more.
If the man balks at giving her extra butter on her popcorn, if he seems to calculate the expense, I think she can make some predictions about what any sexual relationship will be like. Later, when Bill took Hillary to the movies — maybe it was "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" — I bet Bill was all come on! Double extra butter! And Hillary fell in love. I wish I could find a clip of that scene where Julie Christie pigs out on eggs in front of Warren Beatty and he therefore knows she's quite the woman.
Now, Reich is also very short — 4-foot-10 1/2 — and he notes that he's "much more economically and environmentally sustainable."
I exhale less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I use up less space. I have a little house.
In the future, you will have to buy carbon offsets if you want to be tall or fat.
Anyway, it's at the end of the interview that we get to the quote that I highlighted above. Reich says that because he was short, he was bullied a lot as a kid.
People frequently tell me in interviews that they were bullied as children. But no one ever steps forward and says, “I was the bully.” They don’t want to admit to being a bully.
This provokes the questions-and-answer used as the title of this post.
As for Reich's answer, isn't it more likely that kids who were bullied grow up to be bullies themselves? You're very short and/or weak, but you're smart and you study... then you figure out how to crush your erstwhile tormentors by winning in business or politics. Right?
As my ex-husband used to say — maybe he's still recycling this line — "Life is 'Revenge of the Nerds.'"
Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Oprah, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Amy Klobuchar, Claire McCaskill, Jay Rockefeller, John Lewis, Toni Morrison, Roger Wilkins, Eric Holder, Robert Reich, Ted Sorenson, Alice Walker, David Wilhelm, Cornel West, Clifford Alexander, Donald McHenry, Patricia Wald, Newton Minow?
Where were all the big-city mayors who went over to the Obama camp: Chicago's Richard Daley, Cleveland's Frank Jackson, Atlanta's Shirley Franklin, Washington's Adrian Fenty, Newark's Cory Booker, Baltimore's Sheila Dixon?
It isn't hard for big names to get on talk TV to make a point. Any major op-ed page would have stopped the presses to print a statement of support from Ted Kennedy or such for the senator. None appeared. Call it profiles in gopher-holing.
Why is Obama so alone? Are his powerful supporters afraid of saying the wrong thing and angering black voters? Or does precisely the right thing need to be said — and Obama is the only person on the face of the earth who is capable of determining what that precisely right thing is?
Perhaps it's the unpleasantness of trying to draw the line between religion and politics. Or of drawing the line between race and religion. Is the line between religion and politics different in the black community for historical and cultural reasons? But these are not such exquisitely delicate matters, that you can't make bland but emphatic statements of support, and the people listed above aren't the type who hold their tongues until they know what to say.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Encourage Althouse by making a donation:
Make a 1-time donation or set up a monthly donation of any amount you choose:
পোস্টগুলি
