Having a very good crisis

“The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States,” says George Soros. It's not easy to fathom what he means by "just." During the Nazi reign, Soros's Jewish father arranged to give him a new identity as the adopted Christian godson of a Hungarian government official. In that new life, at the age of 14, he accompanied his adopted father in the bureaucratic task of preparing to confiscate Jewish property by going door to door taking inventories. An interviewed quizzed him about any leftover guilt from those days:

KROFT: For example that, “I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.” None of that?

SOROS: Well, of course I c— I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was—well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets—that if I weren’t there—of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would—would—would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the—whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the—I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

After the war, he escaped Soviet retaliation for his youthful Nazi collaboration and somehow made his way through the London School of Economics. Becoming rich while concluding that society was corrupt and must be torn apart to be remade, he ultimately put his fortune at the service of a variety of causes whose common link appears to be agitprop and disruption. So clearly "just" means "different from this," but I'm still unclear.

But you know where all the dark money is coming from?  Those awful Koch brothers.

Conscience

This Quartz article about a billionaire's club called Sineidesis ("conscience") comes at the question of "what in the world is happening" from an unusual variety of perspectives.  Is this part of a 16-year cycle of Rep/Dep shifts?  If you look at that cycle more carefully, do you have to make up pre-Galilean epicycles to make it fit?  Is this 476 A.D. Rome, or the French Revolution?  Are we in the middle of a vast shift in the tides of globalism?  Can a consortium of civic-minded billionaires force private capital to take over where the U.S. government leaves off in battling hotcoldwetdry and making the world safe for Big Bird?  More to the point from my perspective, can they find a way to get ordinary citizens and workers invested in their aims out of enlightened self-interest?  Are we lurching between authoritarianism and populism, and if so which one are we leaving, and which are we heading for?

The author fails to light on any particular convincing explanation, but I did appreciate the acknowledgement that institutions with an appearance of solid eternity have often been known to melt away almost overnight, if their foundations become brittle, narrow, and unpopular.  It's as though the consent of one's fellow human beings persistently mattered, no matter how certain one may be that he is acting in their own best interests, which they're too ignorant to understand.

I was sorry to find the article ending with a snooty little dig at fake news.  The author assumes that anyone not taking the establishment press at face value must have lost its allegiance to Truth, as backwards an assessment as I can easily imagine.  Does no one realize that if you lie long enough, people who care about truth will find other ways to satisfy that thirst?  I struggle with the idea that the press does not know it is stuffed with liars, and yet they clearly do lack this self-awareness.  It's the only way they could conclude that "people don't care about facts any more."

Maybe That's Not What They Thought They Were Doing

The Intercept:

FOURTEEN SENATE DEMOCRATS joined all but one Senate Republican in confirming Rep. Mike Pompeo as the new CIA director on Monday evening, failing a crucial first test of whether Democrats would present a united front to defend human rights and civil liberties in the Trump era.

Possibly they didn't think this was a big test on human rights and civil liberties. Maybe they thought they were voting to confirm a guy they've all known for years, thus shifting him from one place of power and responsibility in the government to another.

Fascists Everywhere!

The wave of paranoia comes to a campus near Bowling Green, Ohio.

'They Made It Easy'

Former Marine and current Ranger Upper Jack Mandaville writes on why he has become an enthusiastic supporter of Trump. It wasn't an obvious choice for him:

I’m pro-choice. I believe in the legalization of marijuana. I don’t believe in God.

I think the Global War on Terrorism was not only mishandled over two presidential administrations, but I also think the invasion of Iraq was one of the worst foreign policy disasters in American history—an invasion I was there for in one of the first American units to cross the border under James Mattis’s 1st Marine Division.

I don’t know what technically makes you an “ally,” but if simply supporting the rights of gay-Americans to love each other and marry qualifies then I’m an ally too. I think building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico is ridiculous. I loathe things which I refer to as Wal-Mart Patriotism. I roll my eyes at Lee Greenwood’s song, “I’m Proud To Be An American.” I refuse to stand at sporting events when announcers ask “All veterans in the crowd to stand up and be recognized for your service.” I don’t think it should be mandatory or expected of politicians or public figures to wear American flag lapel pins. I despise the Tea Party and how they hijacked the Don’t Tread On Me flag. I wasn’t a fan of former President Barack Obama’s administration, but I wholeheartedly believe that he was often the target of unfair treatment and paranoia by the right.

So why Trump? Read on.

It would be good if more on the left read what he has to say, really. I don't think they understand themselves as having this effect: they think they're the ones being provoked, and all this excusing of violence from their side is just being understanding about an understandable reaction. They don't see themselves as provocative in return.

This is an integral part of the Marxian 'critical studies' error that divides the world into oppressor and oppressed, and paints all history as a struggle between the designated oppressor and the designated victim. The designated victim can never be wrong, as Cass was pointing out yesterday. Though they speak constantly about "equality," they cannot imagine having it. They cannot see themselves as equal partners in a struggle, with equal responsibilities to go with their equal entitlements -- and an equal capacity to provoke righteous anger when they cross a line.

I reckon I got to light out for the Territory

Maggie's Farm recommended this article asserting that all American fiction is a re-working of "The Pilgrim's Progress."

Whether and in what way Trump is a Christian, though, is far less important than the fact that he is instantly recognizable as the protagonist in a Christian drama: the lone avenger who stands up to the depraved powers of the world and calls them out for combat.

He draws a contrast with Ted Cruz, who was a preacher rather than a pilgrim.  The article closes with some of the usual damning-by-faint-praise, which I recognize in my own attitude toward the guy:

Donald Trump could be a character in a Frank Capra film or a Sinclair Lewis novel. He is our generation’s incarnation of Bunyan’s pilgrim. I do not mean that as praise (I never liked Bunyan, as it happens). That simply is the kind of people we Americans are, or rather the sort of people we have become at two and a half centuries’ distance from our Revolution. We never have succeeded in training an elite. Whenever an American elite finds itself in power it chokes on its own arrogance. I cheered Mr. Trump to victory in the last election out of disgust for the do-gooders and world-fixers of both the Republican and Democratic mainstreams. Now I wish him good luck. He’ll need all the luck he can get.

A Tale of Two TPPs

And on the subject of the TPP, the reporting on Trump's announcement of our withdrawal amused me highly.  There are a series of sniffy, chilly reports stating the bare fact of withdrawal, putting them in the most hostile context possible (even supplying more pictures of this weekend's thrilling pink-hat marches), barely mentioning the reaction of the union leaders at the occasion, and explaining carefully that lots and lots of labor leaders weren't present.  If they'd been able to find any labor leaders willing to issue thundering denunciations, I'm sure they'd have been glad too.  Apparently Bernie Sanders approves, anyway.

Zero Hedge, in contrast, quotes at length from the Teamsters' Jimmy Hoffa:

The following is a statement from Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa on President Donald Trump signing an executive order to formally withdraw the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership.

“Today, President Trump made good on his campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. With this decision, the president has taken the first step toward fixing 30 years of bad trade policies that have cost working Americans millions of good-paying jobs.

“The Teamsters Union has been on the frontline of the fight to stop destructive trade deals like the TPP, China PNTR, CAFTA and NAFTA for decades. Millions of working men and women saw their jobs leave the country as free trade policies undermined our manufacturing industry. We hope that President Trump’s meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Jan. 31 opens a real dialogue about fixing the flawed NAFTA.

“We take this development as a positive sign that President Trump will continue to fulfill his campaign promises in regard to trade policy reform and instruct the USTR to negotiate future agreements that protect American workers and industry.”

Uh-oh

HotAir points out that the Washington Post seems to have learned who Kate Steinle is, though it's still unwilling to mention her name. Here is the editorial board urging a bit of caution about D.C.'s anti-Trump pro-sanctuary-city public defender program to protect violent illegal aliens from unfair deportation by the Man:

In drafting the program’s fine print, however, D.C. officials should take care: It’s not just most undocumented immigrants facing legal travails who merit protections. So do ordinary Washingtonians . . . .

Nonetheless, it is worth bearing in mind the unhappy experience of some other so-called sanctuary cities, whose zeal to defy federal immigration authorities has at times defeated common sense. In the prime example, San Francisco officials in 2015 ignored a detainer, an official request from federal immigration officials seeking custody of an undocumented immigrant with a long record of drug offenses. The man should have been turned over to federal officials; instead, he was released. A few weeks later, he shot and killed a young woman strolling with her father on the waterfront.

"So do ordinary Washingtonians."  That sounds . . . that sounds almost like "America First." Next, we'll see union leaders praising Trump for deep-sixing the TPP, and after that a rain of frogs.

By the way, how is it that people hear "America First" and think it means "America Best, you're scum"?  When I'm bargaining with someone, I expect to put my interests first as I expect him to put his interests first.  If we're both happy with a compromise, great.  If he says he's not interested in a deal because, much as it may suit me, it doesn't do anything for him, I don't think, "Why, that boor.  He thinks he's better than me."  Unless, I suppose, he owed me reparations or something.

Vikings are the new Highlanders

Some folks in Scotland have what they apparently take to be a brilliant way of boosting tourism and trade: rebrand as a Nordic country.

The document points out that the north of Scotland is geographically closer to the Arctic than London and argues that taking on a Nordic identity would allow the country to “embed” itself more effectively within the Arctic community than presenting itself as a “near-Arctic” state.

As it happens, I have recently been re-reading Egil's Saga. Probably several of you have read it; for those who haven't, here's a quick summary.

Important parts of it take place in Scotland, as well as in Northumbria on the border regions, while Eric Bloodaxe is king out of Jorvik (or York, as it is now known, in a tributary relationship to the English king, having previously been king in Norway, but having had to flee). Egil fights against "the Scots," only they are led by a king named Olaf the Red, or Olaf Sigtryggsson, who also bears a Gaelic name, Amlaib Cuaran.

Lots of Scottish clans have explicit Viking links, too, such as the Clan Gunn.

So is Scotland Nordic, or is it Celtic? Well, it's both -- as is Ireland, where Brian Boru married a woman named Gormflaith, whose earlier husband was also named Olaf, and whose son was the same Sigtrygg Silkbeard that would later be forced to submit to Brian Boru after the battle of Clontarf.

In a way, I'm glad to see the interest in heritage. It's certainly an interesting heritage, as interesting as the Highlander heritage that would presumably be downplayed in order to advance the Viking heritage.

In another way, I wonder at this 'branding' exercise. It seems as if people take great care to choose their ancestors these days.

Reducing Regulations by 75%

In terms of numbers, or cost of compliance, or what? Anything would be good, really, but I think the best way to do it is to:

1) Issue an EO repealing all regulations and EOs since the election. Then,

2) Order all regulatory agencies that they can keep 1 regulation for every 3 they discard (and no new ones).

By the end of the year, that second order should say, any agency that hasn't met the target will be forced to meet it by having the first 3 of every 4 remaining regulations repealed. If you want a more orderly process than that, better get on it.

UPDATE: Following that, issue an order that the remaining 1 in 4 regulations go before Congress for an up-or-down vote, after which they too will be repealed. The ones Congress likes will become laws, and so won't need to be regulations. The ones they don't, well, we'll just have to do without them.

In a few easy steps, you'd recapture the legislative authority for the Legislative branch, and make the environment for new business in America better than it's been in a century.

A Piece for Cass

A philosopher writing in the New York Times writes on the dangers of contempt -- particularly for those out of power.

Trump and his supporters are responsible for much of our current glut of contempt, but they are hardly the only perpetrators of it. Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment qualifies as contempt, although her subsequent expression of regret undid some of its effects. Opponents of Trump have also directed plenty of contempt at both Trump himself — as we saw in some of the signs brandished at Saturday’s marches across the country — and at the people who voted for him, particularly rural voters without much education. Contempt has been injected into our public space from all sides.

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that all expressions of contempt are equally bad. Contempt occurs in the context of social relationships that are themselves characterized by power differences.... It may seem as though the best response to Trump’s contempt is to return it in kind, treating him the same way he treats others. The trouble, though, is that contempt toward Trump does not function in the same way that his contempt toward others functions. Even if we grant that Trump deserves contempt for his attitudes and behaviors, his powerful social position insulates him from the worst of contempt’s effects. It is simply not possible to disregard or diminish the agency of the president of the United States. This means that contempt is not a particularly useful weapon in the battle against bigotry or misogyny. The socially vulnerable cannot wield it effectively precisely because of their social vulnerability.

The better strategy for those who are already disempowered is to reject contempt on its face. Returning contempt for contempt legitimizes its presence in the public sphere. The only ones who benefit from this legitimacy are the people powerful enough to use contempt to draw the boundaries of the political community as they see fit.

We'll see if people are prepared to listen to her. It's an instrumental argument -- the reason not to engage in contempt is not that it's morally wrong, but because it works to the opponent's advantage. That kind of argument might be more persuasive than a genuinely moral one, in a diverse nation with little remaining agreement on what (if anything) rightly grounds morality.

Of course, the problem with an instrumental argument like this is that it doesn't cut both ways. If the reason to avoid contempt is that it empowers Trump at the expense of others, then that's also a reason for Trump and his supporters to actively choose to use contempt. By the same token, it suggests that those who privately hold us in contempt should insist on universal respect only until they manage to come to power -- after which point, expressing their contempt for us becomes a useful tool for them.

UPDATE: An allied piece in the NYT: "Is It OK to Punch a Nazi?"

Women's March as Woodstock

Last night I spoke with a friend who went to the DC Women's March, and her description reminded me of that touchstone event from the 1960s. Organization was totally inadequate. Cell phone comms went down due to overstress. The march was canceled because, given the security barriers up for the Inauguration, there were too many people to physically do it in a safe manner. The mobs did it anyway, at great personal risk of stampede (fortunately avoided, but only by fortune). There wasn't adequate food, water, sanitation, transportation, or anything else.

I assume the people who went will be as proud of it as those who attended Woodstock were to have been there. Like Bilbo at the Battle of Five Armies -- his favorite experience to recount, Tolkien tells us, 'though he played little part in it' -- having endured and survived such a mass event will become not just a point of pride, but a permanent part of one's identity.

What will be interesting to see is how the anarchistic spirit of the event plays out in what is not an anarchist movement. Apparently women were violating all sorts of laws governing trespass, climbing monuments to decorate them (or 'deface' them, as opponents might say), and pushing security personnel into a defensive -- or defenseless -- stance by sheer numbers. Police couldn't use tear gas to control them without risking killing them by stampede, and the crowd was too full of women, children, and the elderly for that to be a conscionable risk. There was not enough jail space for so many protesters anyway. They did whatever they wanted, and though there were many men with guns, there was no one who would stop them.

That would be exhilarating for anyone, but especially for someone whose movement was directed at defiance of overweening government. What this movement will come to represent is unclear, but early inclinations are that at its heart are big-government aims. It wants a government that will guarantee that women are treated with courtesy and deference in the public space (as indeed these women really were, it should be noted, by the agents of the state). It wants a government that will enter into their relationships with employers to judge whether or not they are being paid fairly. Being built around Clinton's loss, it presumably wants the things she ran on: publicly-funded day care, family leave, health care.

In other words, it seems to want to be provided with a sense of safety and security. How sharply that contrasts with the pleasant and joyous anarchy it provoked for a few hours on Saturday afternoon.

Incoherence

I see from my morning email feed that Jim Geraghty has put into words just what I was fumbling towards:

Critics argued that the Tea Party movement was driven by a panoply of issues: opposition to Obamacare, outrage over the TARP bailouts, the threat of tax increases, the growth of government, concern about the national debt, among others. It was a fair criticism, but it was ultimately moot. Most members of the Tea Party unified around the idea of staunchly opposing what that guy in the Oval Office is doing.

The Women’s March on Washington Saturday certainly had its own smorgasbord of concerns: abortion rights, racial profiling, gay rights, opposition to deporting illegal immigrants, opposition to Islamophobia, workers’ right to organize, concern over global warming…

But as much as we on the right might chuckle at the contradictions – a lot of labor unions work in the industries that environmentalists would like to see shut down, and a lot of Muslims have views on gay rights that this movement would oppose – the people involved in Saturday’s marches will unify around the idea of staunchly opposing what that guy in the Oval Office is doing.

Fear is a powerful motivator; fear gets people’s butts up off their couches. When you have more people caring about what’s going on in Washington, you have more people who become interested in running for office. In 2010, Republicans suddenly had bushels of candidates – usually good ones – in places they rarely had one before: “After surpassing a goal to recruit 80 candidates in key races, Leader Boehner set a more ambitious objective of 100. At the end of the day, McCarthy and the team at the NRCC were able to help get a Republican on the ballot in 431 of the 435 House congressional districts.”

The Tea Party movement gift-wrapped a message for Republican candidates: Democrats in Congress had grown arrogant and out of touch, and were completely oblivious to the growing anger and dissatisfaction in their districts:

The townhall protests that erupted in August 2009 provided the first visible signs of the anger and frustration that Americans of all political parties were feeling. While Speaker Pelosi and other Democrat leaders criticized these citizens as “un-American,” the NRCC embraced the movement and highlighted the rude awakening that vulnerable Democrats were receiving with daily emails entitled “Recess Roastings.” Events held by Reps. Baron Hill (IN-09), Steve Driehaus (OH-01) and others became instant YouTube sensations and were proof that Democrats had a much bigger problem on their hands than they originally expected.

Throughout the Obama presidency, the Democrats desperately yearned for their own version of the Tea Party. They envied the crowds, the passion, the visible signs of grassroots opposition, cropping up across the country. You only demonize something if it matters.

It now appears that as the Trump presidency dawns, angry liberals are building something akin to the Tea Party movement. It will look different, it will be geographically concentrated in different areas, and of course, it will get much more sympathetic media coverage. But it will be there, and it could be a big factor in 2018 midterms. It’s also worth remembering that the Tea Party was ultimately a mixed bag for the Republican party. Yes, it brought them Mike Lee, Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Paul LePage, Trey Gowdy, Ron Johnson, etc., but it also brought Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Carl Paladino, and Richard Mourdock. An impassioned grassroots movement giveth, and an impassioned grassroots movement taketh away.

Geraghty's banner now reads: "Day Four of the Trump Presidency. Sky Status: Intact."

Death to the TPP

Something I've been advocating in this space for quite a while may actually happen. Don't forget that there is an exactly similar problem on the other side of the country with the T-TIP treaty.

I Have Wasted My Life

Only now, too late to begin to catch up, do I see the truth.

Heads Up, Sonny

Ways K12 Education Is Not a Free Market

Many times I have heard conservatives talk about K12 education as if it were a market, especially when the topic of school choice comes up.

I am completely in favor of school choice, but there are some important ways in which the market idea fails. If we want to talk about how to improve the situation, it might be useful to explore those ways.

First, education is mandated. In that way, it is like Obamacare. Parents cannot just opt out. If you want education to work like the free market, you have to let parents opt out, and you have to accept that some parents won't be able to afford to send their kids to school. Some kids won't get an education, just like not everyone can or wants to buy a Cadillac.

Second, public funding plays an essential role. As soon as you introduce public funding, including school choice vouchers, you are again not really dealing with a free market situation. However, if funding were attached to students, and students / families could choose which schools to attend, wouldn't that be analogous to a free market situation? Not as things stand now, because ...

Third, public and private schools do not follow the same regulations. If you really want to see how they stack up against each other, they need to follow the same rules. If we want improvement, we would let public schools act like private schools, meaning they don't have to take any given student, nor keep problem students, nor keep problem teachers. Here again, if you let every school decide not to take some students, you will end up with some students not getting any education.

How much we really want K12 education to be a free market depends in part on how determined we are to offer every child an education. The more like a free market we want it, the less we can insist that every child have the chance at an education.

So why am I in favor of school choice? Because we are stuck with a system that doesn't work for a lot of students. Until we pretty thoroughly overhaul our system, school choice is the best we can do.

Your Slip Is Showing

I thought we weren't supposed to talk about how female political figures dress anyway? Not true? Or maybe it's just that, you know, we aren't supposed to talk about it.

Leave our failing schools alone!

David Harsanyi on the demented interrogation of Dept. of Education nominee DeVos:

[M]inority groups in America’s largest cities are lagging in proficiency in reading and math. Most of them are at the bottom 5 percent of schools in their own state. There is only so much an education secretary can accomplish, but being accused of being a “grave threat” to this system is a magnificent endorsement.

* * *

. . . Democrats on the committee stressed that DeVos was a Republican appointed by a Republican president who had given money to Republican organizations. They further pointed out that DeVos was a Christian who had given money to Christian organizations (often referred to as “antigay groups”) that didn’t meet with their moral approval.

* * *

. . . [R]ich and middle-class Americans already have school choice. In most places, the whiter the neighborhood the better the school system, and the better the school system the higher the prices of homes, making it impossible for those who aren’t wealthy to escape substandard schools (rural school also often suffer.) This is the status quo Warren, Murphy, and Murray hope to preserve.

* * *

You can visit heavily Hispanic areas in Denver and watch mothers cry when their kids’ numbers don’t come up in a charter-school lottery. Or you can listen to technocrats in editorial board meetings, whose kids live in prosperous districts or attend private schools, telling you why too many of those parents have a choice.

Baked-in gerrymandering

Sean Trende has done a series of articles analyzing Trump's win, culminating in this one, which focuses on the geographical distribution of deep-Blue support.  Because we still have a federal system and do not elect Presidents by popular vote, the very division of the country into states imposes a basic gerrymandering on the electoral map.  Add to that a rural-urban split that's been growing for 30 years, and you have an electoral map in which a candidate like Clinton is "wasting" votes by running up the score in states like California, where she already had a lock on the electors.  A winning strategy requires finding a message that also works outside the large cities, which are concentrated in a few states.  Bouncing the rubble in those states won't get you the White House.