The Carpentariat

Too much for Trump to grasp

Prime Minister Theresa May, or, as the White House called her last year, Teresa May, "wants Mr. Trump’s help for a trade deal with the United States after Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, known as Brexit," or, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calls it, "an exercise in economic masochism that Britons will long regret," or, as the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, Guy Verhofstad, calls it, a "shambles."

This could work out. A masochistic ally wants something from our sado-narcissistic president, both of whom are of a like, shambolic mind. But it won't work out. Because …

Chancellor Angela Merkel once had to explain to Trump a dozen times (literally, according to contemporary reports) that Germany could not negotiate a bilateral trade agreement with the United States, seeing how Germany is a member of the European Union.

Trump now wants a bilateral trade agreement with May, and vice versa. But, as a British commentator has noted: "May [recently] made major concessions in Britain’s much-delayed 'divorce negotiations' with the E.U. Brexit Britain was looking forward to talking to Trump about a whizzo Anglo-American trade deal, but May’s cave-ins to the E.U. … could wreck that."

God save the queen and the poor bloke who must explain that one to Trump, who couldn't comprehend Germany's straightforward trade situation. How will he ever grasp that Britain — half out but possibly still half in the E.U. — would be barred from a bilateral agreement with the U.S.?

Nonetheless, Trump should feel quite at home while spending a wee bit of time in the U.K. For as the aforementioned British commentator also noted: "In recent days, British politics has gone crazy, and the prime minister … is in grievous peril of blowing her government to pieces."

Even if Trump doesn't know the feeling, we do.

 

Everybody should go to vote (just don't give ballots to some)

The world is full of cocksure voters who vote first and maybe, maybe begin to ask questions later — some sort of righteous blow against the "elites" or some equally damn fool thing. Paul Krugman:

While America offers a market comparable in size to that of the EU, it’s much further away, so that even if the UK could make an incredible deal with us, it wouldn’t be worth nearly as much as the customs union they have.

All of this explains why May is trying to negotiate a deal that keeps the customs union intact. But that, of course, ain’t much of an exit: Brussels will still set UK trade policy, except that Britain will no longer have a vote. So what was the point of Brexit in the first place?

Good question. Too bad more people didn’t ask it before the referendum.

 

Trump should be shunned

It's no wonder I've been so ill, so fatigued. I'm simply sick and tired of having a fucking gangster lead from ignorance at home while poisoning my country's reputation abroad.

This morning's headlines are just what one would expect from this absolute horror of a little man. "Trump unleashed a blistering attack Wednesday on Germany and other NATO allies," reports the Washington Post, "wasting no time … to hit at Washington’s closest partners for what he said were hypocritical demands for U.S. security protection." (Nicholas Burns, our former ambassador to NATO, simultaneously recalls in a NYT op-ed that "Canada and [our] European allies volunteered within hours of the [9/11] attacks to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty…. They came to our defense when we most needed them. They sent troops to fight with us in Afghanistan. They are still there with us 17 years later.")

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clearly doesn't understand how to deal with the orange-rugged bully. He should have decked him; instead Stoltenberg "appeared reduced to spluttering as Trump cut him off after he started to explain that allies traded with Russia even during the Cold War." (Because he finds international trade incomprehensible, Trump has complained about Europe's, especially Germany's, purchase of Russian energy.)

In a repeat of Singapore's reality TV suspense, Trump — oh say it ain't so! — "might withhold his signature from an agreement that has already been approved by national security adviser John Bolton," concludes the Post, based on "worry" from diplomats. "That would send the alliance into a tailspin …" and so on and so on, yada yada, everything we've been reading throughout the two execrable years of this truly unholy administration.

I'd suggest kicking the little goon out of the room before he has a chance to upend — again — the NATO alliance, and then slapping 100 percent tariffs on every U.S. good entering the European Union. I would of course include an addendum: The alliance will return to normal, as will average 3 percent European tariffs, just as soon as the U.S. returns to normal. In two years, we trust. Meanwhile, fuck off.

 

Sorry. A bit of  a relapse. I guess I still needed one more day.  

 

What udder boobs are these guys

By definition, they can never hit absolute bottom in this bottomless atrocity of an administration, but by God they came close in opposing … mother's milk.

At the World Health Assembly in Geneva this spring, "American officials sought to water down [a resolution that declares mother’s milk the healthiest for children] by removing language that called on governments to 'protect, promote and support breast-feeding' and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children."

For good measure, in the name of Trump we plucky Americans "also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a W.H.O. effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to lifesaving medicines."

As I read the NY Times' dumbfoundingly ghoulish report late yesterday I was pretty sure I had once again lapsed into some sort of otherworldly delirium. The United States is now on record as having opposed mother's milk, deleterious food products for children and lifesaving medicines for poor countries?

Losing children at our own border isn't enough; we now wish to kill them where they live. And if target nations don't like it, we would cut off trade and military aid. This was insanity. No way around it.

Fortunately, the carefree, light-hearted, humane Russians stepped in to to resolve the W.H.O. dispute. "We’re not trying to be a hero here," said a Russian delegate, "but we feel that it is wrong when a big country tries to push around some very small countries." That last part, we gather, was purely for comic effect.

 

Saturday: It's probably obvious by now that I'll need at least the weekend to recover. Sorry about this. See you later.

*** 

Friday: At 8:10am I opened my laptop, preparing for work. At 8:14am the vomiting commenced.

The diarrhea was getting old. So I thought the vomiting was a nice touch.

Needless to say, I need one more day of recuperation. Thanks for understanding. 

 

A pro-Trump columnist is deeply worried that the left is hurting itself. Uh-huh.

This morning I became downright weepy at Marc Thiessen's patriotic assist to Democrats, in "The left’s contempt is going to reelect Trump." Here's a columnist whose contempt for the left and love for nearly all things Trump snarls twice weekly from the pages of the Washington Post, and yet he's advising the Dems on how to improve their electoral lot by 2020. "The left’s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on Trump," writes Thiessen, "are not peeling [#NeverHillary] voters away from him; they are pushing them further into the president’s camp." Just how Democrats are doing this has Thiessen especially upset.

"In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro’s 'f— Trump' tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee’s calling Ivanka Trump a 'feckless c---' on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters added fuel to the fire by openly calling on mobs of left-wing activists to 'absolutely harass' Trump officials. Then, there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border with Nazi Germany, and the Time magazine cover depicting Trump staring down heartlessly at a crying migrant girl and implying she was separated from her mother (until it emerged that she had not in fact been separated from her mother). And now come the threats to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one."

Enough of my sarcasm. I can't sustain it in the face of Thiessen's unashamed hypocrisy. His litany of above offenses is nothing compared to the right's vicious anti-Obama campaign for eight appalling years. From the Marc Thiessen crowd, Obama suffered asinine accusations of birtherism and postcolonial socialism, as well as the unprecedented indignity of a shouted You lie! during a healthcare speech to Congress. He endured pounding obstructionism, charges of having "palled around with terrorists" and "countless [Obama] opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter" who regularly labeled him as either a Nazi or Stalinist. Finally, Thiessen is hurt because of threats to block Trump's Supreme Court nominee? His side never let President Obama get even that far.

Atop all that, Mr. Thiessen laments the failure of appealing to the left's — brace yourself — "civility, decency and conscience." Again, this from a man who routinely defends a president utterly lacking in all three. But since those appeals "won’t work," he continues, "then perhaps an appeal to base political pragmatism will."

"Democrats … lost because they have become a party of coastal liberal elites who have lost touch with millions of ordinary citizens in Middle America — working-class voters who are struggling with factories closing, jobs leaving and an opioid epidemic that is destroying their families…. Spasms of anti-Trump outrage are not going to win them back. If anything, they are confirming these voters’ conclusions that Democrats still don’t get it — and don’t get them. The left’s miasma of contempt may feel cathartic, but it is the best thing that ever happened to Trump. Indeed, it may very well get him reelected."

In fact, Democrats lost because of leftist protest votes, an insufficient Democratic turnout and Trump's appeal to white status anxiety. This latter point is demonstrated by the fact that he has done nothing to bring back factory jobs, end outsourcing or the opioid epidemic, and yet his support among whites remains stable. Why? Because he caters to their racism, which is what really counts in their pro-Trump book.

Chiefly, though, you might want to be a trifle suspicious of a Trump-supporting columnist who warns the left that their contempt is helping his candidate, so they should stop. (Of course they couldn't even if they wanted to, since Trump is supremely contemptible.)

Meanwhile, have a nice Fourth.

 

A true windbag

The always delightful Catherine Rampell:

Instead of doubling back on his misbegotten import taxes, Trump wants Congress to give him even more power to raise import duties, as laid out in a leaked draft of his “United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act.”

Yes, you read that right. The White House is proposing legislation that literally abbreviates to the “U.S. FART Act.”

 

For tomorrow's Supreme Court, see the Court of the 1930s

There were some interesting comments to my post this morning, "Will Trumpism survive Trump?" I won't rehash my thoughts and those of the commenters, since you can read both within a couple minutes. I will add, though, that the same sentiment of this morning's commenters — that Trump is shackling us with a Supreme Court that will stifle whatever leftward turn comes electorally — also existed in Roosevelt's era, right up until his ill-received Court-packing plan.

In growing frustration with S.C. decisions that were stalling or reversing his various reforms, FDR announced his Court plan after a strong showing in the 1936 elections. He believed he would have public opinion on his side. He was dead wrong, for he was also messing with perhaps the most notable institution of all American institutions.

As it turned out, however, the impetus behind his Court plan was unnecessary. Roosevelt announced his plan in February 1937; by April, two conservative Justices reversed themselves (via some clever ideological maneuvering) and ruled that both the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act were, after all, constitutional. (Not long after that, FDR was able to nominate his own Justices.)

The Court crisis, once seen as an inescapable, multigenerational drag, was over in a metaphorical flash.

Why so sudden? Because ultimately the Supreme Court is a political body. It follows public opinion and it's well aware that it cannot ignore that opinion for long. What's called its "moral authority" would simply dry up and blow away. Chief Justice John Roberts has already demonstrated his understanding of this principle, and he is unlikely to be the only one in the future.

I am certainly not arguing that today's Court will take the path of the Court under FDR. I'm only saying that history offers some guidance — and hope.

 

Looking for a 2018 Dem strategy? Two words.

In a smart though far too lengthy post, Rachel Bitecofer, a political analyst with the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, predicts a strong November showing for Democrats — assuming they get nasty and stay nasty, my long-recommended 2018 strategy. The strategy's rationale can be summarized in two words: negative partisanship.

Contemporary elections are largely driven by … negative partisanship. Although partisanship has always been an important driver of electoral behavior the influence of partisanship on vote choice is immense in the polarized era…. What drives turnout at the margins in off year and midterm elections is negative partisanship….

Because of negative partisanship Democrats will have a significant enthusiasm advantage in turnout in elections so long as Donald Trump sits in the White House. In places where there are large pools of untapped Democratic voters, the party is going to win marginal seats as well as some seats that have not been competitive since at least 2006….

Right now, the advantage for Democrats on the generic ballot hovers on average around 7 points and produces a seat gain for Democrats anticipated to be somewhere between 12 and 33 seats…. In terms of the House I am able to identify 12 specific seats that will flip to the Democrats.... My analysis also produces an additional 12 seats that are highly likely to flip…. I predict that nearly all, if not all, of the Clinton districts will, in fact, flip to Democrats.

The Times' David Leonhardt asked Bitecofer "What she saw as the biggest risk facing the Democrats." She answered:

"Biggest risk for Dems is poor strategic messaging. Only a Democrat would look at a polarizing POTUS who polls in the low 40s and decide not to make him a centerpiece of their messaging. Obama was actually popular when the Rs deployed that strategy in 2010 and 2014. You want to tap into that referendum effect as much as possible" — in brief, subordinating negative partisanship as Democrats' strategic message.

I would hope that Dems so engage with a dash of comic style and some street wit; something "talkable" around the office watercooler, more than just crude, overt Trump-bashing. But however they do it, it must be done with consistency: Trump, as Bitecofer writes, must be the "centerpiece of their messaging" — and that Trumpian centerpiece, even if humorous at times, has to be dark.

 

Will Trumpism survive Trump?

I would have posed these as the most interesting and important political questions of our time, but Michael Gerson beat me to it:

"It is difficult to deny Trump’s strength in the base of the Republican Party, evidenced by the degree of political intimidation many elected Republicans feel. But the most interesting and important questions remain: Is Trumpism a compelling ideological basis for the Republican Party in the future? Is it really the wave of the political future?"

One might ask, Would National Socialism have survived beyond 1936 or '37, had Joesph Goebbels or Hermann Göring taken the reins from a dead Hitler? To me, the question seems rhetorical. The party required the unique debauchery of its principal founder; no substitute would have sufficed. And that provides an insight into the future of Trumpism as a "compelling ideological basis for the Republican Party in the future." Without Trump, Trumpism will recede into the rancid squalidness of, say, Bircherism, a kind of conservative embarrassment that hated damn near everyone.

Gerson answers in a somewhat similar but less forceful way: "It should give the advocates of Trumpism — defined by some mix of protectionism, nativism and bitter resentment of elites — pause that the strongest advocates of the creed are some of the most frightening figures in American politics." Singled out by the conservative columnist are West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship, Iowa Rep. Steve King, Arizona Senate candidate and former sheriff Joe Arpaio, and Virginia Senate candidate Corey Stewart. They are indeed "frightening," but is any a credible replacement for Donald Trump? Again, rhetorical, I think.

Gerson also notes that "Long-term demographic trends are running against the GOP, with the non-Hispanic white population declining from 76 percent to 63 percent over the past two decades and the country on track to be majority minority by 2045." This is, perhaps, the most commonly cited reason for the ultimate death of Trumpism. "A strategy of feeding white backlash against a multicultural future worked for Trump — barely — in 2016. Will it work for Republicans in 2018 and 2020?" asks Gerson. "Perhaps, if Democrats move precipitously to the left. But in the longer run, will Trumpism appeal to millennials (who now consistently give Trump around a 25 percent approval rating)? Will it work with suburban women?" No.

Finally, Gerson returns to his evangelical roots by asking "what are the moral implications of a political strategy that employs racial and ethnic antagonism as a motivating factor?" Well, I'd say they kinda suck, wouldn't you? But we needn't ponder the moral implications of the GOP's racism. As a practical matter, their outcome is doomed.

And that is the most sublime aspect of a pluralistic, democratic society. Extremism may reign from time to time, but in time, the center re-holds. This fall, almost certainly, the center will re-shift legislatively, and in 2020 — assuming "Democrats [don't] move precipitously to the left" — the center will reconquer the executive. For the unmanly clown in the German helmet, above, (an AP photo posted by Gerson), is anything but Middle America.

 

Comment section: housekeeping note

There's an old saw, of possibly dubious value, among your internet statistical types that for every 300-500 readers there is one commenter. The same ratio probably holds true for citizens vs. activists, which means God only knows what most readers/citizens think, but the vocal ones are far from shy. Of late — if you're a reader, but you don't peek at the comment section — you might think the readership to this site has exploded, based on the number of comments. If you're a commenter, you know better: There is but a core of commenters — I can't really say how many, it fluctuates — but they've taken to back-and-forths of less than genteel swipes. I have avoided these brawls as best I can, in fact I have avoided even reading the comments as best I can, since I don't really care what one reader thinks of another reader's IQ.

Alas, I can avoid it no longer. I was once glad to see readers of a conservative (or pseudoconservative) bent join in the conversation; I enjoy an exchange of ideas and opinions and believed that others would too. But the liberal-conservative dichotomy has become little more than a game of verbal dodge ball. I am not accusing one side or the other — either exclusively or in their preponderance — of rhetorical war crimes. I'm an agnostic as to assigning blame. Neither do I care about blame. That's not the point here. The point is that the comment section has become intolerably ugly. And something has to change, I need to take some sort of step here.

Let's start with Step Two. Andrew Sullivan did it right: He never had a comment section. What he did was publish comments of interest and relevance that came into his inbox. He could be selective and ignore comments of pure vitriol. I should have done the same. This, as logic would have it, was a happy medium between Step One and Step Three — the latter being no comment section and no reader comments anywhere, period, which I'd rather not ever impose.

Step One is what I'll settle for, for now. I'm asking commenters to pull back, on a kind of honor system. I really don't have the time to monitor all comments, but for the time being I shall. Should a commenter write something I find less than "honorable" — that is, off topic, hateful, ad-homimem-esque — I'll delete it. The only exception I'll make is if a commenter chooses to point one of these tactics toward me. I'm fair game, as any political host should be. I'm still disinclined to ban anyone, since a few moronic comments don't necessarily mean the commenter is an incurable moron. He or she might have something of value to say, sometime. If I find I'm spending an ungodly amount of time weighing decisions to delete or not to delete, or in just deleting, I shall move to Step Two.

Some will be unhappy with my decision and they will want to get one final shot in at somebody. This they may do in the post below, "POTUS, in a nutshell." Have at it. Knock yourself out. Tell that special cretinous someone just how much you hate their ignorant guts. Just don't do it here.

So there you have it, the new comment regime. I'd like to know your thoughts. If you're a non-commenter, please violate your reticence rule and let me know your thoughts. Would a civil comment section perhaps persuade you to comment in the future?

I should not have had to do this. We're all adults. Let's act like adults — like thinkers, not bomb-throwers. Thank you. —PM

***

I'm going to leave this post at the top for a day or two, just so everyone gets the message. New posts below.

 

POTUS, in a nutshell

From Charles Blow, there is something about this passage — its sheer concentration, I guess — which cracks one right on the head:

"[Trump] openly lies, fabricates and exaggerates while two-fifths of the population cheers him for it…. He spurns our allies and embraces our adversaries and people shrug…. He … [is] waging open warfare on the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to tarnish it before [it nails him]…. He is a racist who disparages black and brown people, whether they be immigrants, Muslims, people from Haiti and Africa, Barack Obama, the mayor of San Juan or Maxine Waters…. He is attacking the press in the most aggressive of terms so that what they reveal about him will be viewed with skepticism…. He is attempting to weaken our institutions, our protocols and conventions, our faith in the truth, our sense of honor and our respect for the rule of law."

("And somehow, many Americans, even those disgusted by what they see, have resigned themselves to this new reality.")

 

CSI: Bedlam

In the world of broadcast propaganda and presidential popularity there exists an arithmetic discrepancy that has mystified me for some time.

According to the market research firm of Statista.com, Fox News' prime-time audience numbers 2.4 million viewers (MSNBC comes in at 2 million; CNN, 1 million). Reports the NY Times, Fox "recently celebrated its 197th consecutive month … as the most-watched cable news network in prime time and over the 24-hour broadcast day." Switching to politics, in the annus horribilis of 2016, 63 million Americans voted for Donald Trump.

In other words, the size of Fox News' viewership is not only eclipsed by the number of Trump-friendly Americans, it is decidedly inumbrated, like London during the Blitz. Among the president's genuflecting lobotomates, a mere 3.8 percent tune in to Rupert Murdoch's "propaganda machine," as the recovering Fox News commentator, retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, described the network three months ago in a blistering Washington Post op-ed.

And yet a prevailing if not the dominant "narrative" in terms of explaining Trump's sustained support is Fox, Fox, Fox News. There's also Wahhabi talk radio and its militant clerics of Limbaugh, Levin & Loonies, but logic would dictate that much of that listening audience overlaps with Fox's gaping fanatics.

So what feeds those other tens of millions of Trumpeteers? What other instruments of toxic disinformation clutter their minds with the White House's fakest news … what leads them to believe the chronically duplicitous Sarah Huckabee Sanders … just what, for heaven's sake, poisons their political veins with all the lies and deceits of this truly grotesque administration?

It sure as hell isn't the NY Times, or the Post, or The New Yorker or "PBS Newshour." Is it, perhaps, and in large part, Twitter, which this hideous little POTUS further pollutes with contemptible dreck such as his latest this morning? "The Liberal Left, also known as the Democrats … want Open Borders. Crime would be rampant and uncontrollable!"

Of course even that, most likely, was another overlap from Fox News. Trump watches Doocy or Hannity or Judge Jeanine, Trump steams, Trump tweets. As Media Matters' Matthew Gertz wrote for Politico earlier this year: "There is no strategy to Trump’s Twitter feed; he is not trying to distract the media. He is being distracted. He darts with quark-like speed from topic to topic in his tweets because that’s how cable news" — in Trump's case, by now, almost exclusively Fox News — "works."

Thus I remain mystified, other than speculating that our national disease of profound voter ignorance — that is to say, Trump's support — is essentially idiopathic, homegrown, miasmic. On the evening news, maybe, Harry and Louise catch a minute or two of Trump railing about swarthy, drug-addled rapists storming the border — and by God they like the cut of his jib. That's about all I can come up with — a banal, inverse proportion thing. The more ignorant one is, the more one adores Trump.