Morning Ed: Politics {2018.01.29.M}
{Ed Note: Tomorrow I am leaving town off-and-on for the next couple of weeks. If links are bad, they won’t be fixed. You might be able to track them down here, or maybe not.}
[Po1] Emina Melonic looks at leftist globalism, nationalism, and core principles.
[Po2] Classism at work: The reason we don’t have a Troglodyte/Eat-the-Rich Party is that it doesn’t have the wealthy patrons and media influence a party needs to succeed.
[Po3] Marissa Mayer is okay with being discriminated against on account of her values. {via Oscar}
[Po4] Sure. Why not.
[Po5] Is John Roberts going moderate? One way or another, either he or Breyer is likely to be the next swing vote.
[Po6] Just a reminder: We could get rid of shutdowns altogether, for the most part, if we were so inclined. Changes like this would need to be made without knowing who is going to control the House at the next cycle. Such as right now, for instance. (The specific proposal throws in budget cuts, which are unnecessary.)
[Po7] Francis Fukuyama writes about the rise of populist nationalism, and remains hopeful.
[Po8] Once you’re talking about soulmates, a lack of actual infidelity doesn’t actually matter as much as it otherwise might.
Po1: I disagree with practically every sentence in this article. One, whether or not immigrants are assimilating as been part of the conversation over immigration in the United States since the 19th century. Victorian Americans debated whether the Irish, Germans, Chinese, Italians, Jews, and numerous other groups would ever become real true Americans. Nativists hated the Germans for sticking to their language and culture of opera and beer after church just as much they hate Latinos for not learning Spanish and watching Telemundo.
Two, liberalism existed in something close to its current form since the 1880s when European liberals in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands didn’t go full socialist but started to doubt laissez-faire. Classical liberalism with its commitment to free trade and the free movement of people is even more globalist than modern liberalism in many ways. Modern liberals tend to be skeptical of free trade.
Po2: The One Australia Party was an attempt to mix social conservatism with economic liberalism. I’m also not sure if Libertarians really count as a socially liberal/economically conservative party. Their economics can be really radically capitalist in ways that the Republicans are not. I doubt that many Republicans would be into privately issued money or free trade in all narcotic substances. They might be socially permissive or libertine but they aren’t into using the force of law to solve social issues the way liberals are. Allowing for private discrimination is not a socially liberal idea.
Po3: Good for her. We don’t have to be fine with it though.Report
Telemundo was really problematic, though. Sabado Gigante is one of the most sexist shows in the history of television. Everyone I know heaved a huge sigh of relief when they finally took it off the air.
It’s one thing if you don’t want to learn English.
But there are things that everyone ought to be expected to learn.Report
[Po3] When she was “discriminated against” – it doesn’t mean that she, personally, was refused something anyone off the street might expect to receive. Like say, seating at a lunch counter or something. An organization just has a declared policy of not doing business with other organizations, like hers, that work directly against the goals it is mandated to support.
So yeah, I think actually I’d be fine with that kind of “discrimination” against me too.
Also – what is with conservative think tanky things having such dumb names? Alliance Defending Freedom? You just hear that and you know it’s going to be spending most of its time fighting against those people‘s freedom to exist unmolested.Report
@dragonfrog
I think the answer to your question is rather obvious:
1. Words are malleable and can mean different things to different people. There are no universal definitions.
2. MSM seems to take it at face value. When was the last time CNN or any other big news network challenge a group like the ADF or House Freedom Caucus on the use of a word like Freedom or Liberty in their name?
3. Their donors (rich and not-so rich) sincerely believe in the names because they are partisan and highly ideological.
4. They are also courting to low-information level people who don’t have firm ideologies per se.Report
Po4: I am pretty sure that some guys who claimed to be CIA agents did, in fact, talk to Moby and ask him to talk about these things.
Moby is coming at this from a place of good faith, is what I’m saying.
It’s those mean, mean guys from the chans that are at fault here.Report
Who had to gain from discrediting Moby? Eminem? Carnivores? People who want to roll back drug decriminalization?Report
“Let’s see if we can get Moby on camera arguing that the CIA talked to him and asked him to talk about this stuff because he’s got a really good social media following.”
“We couldn’t do that… could we? No… we couldn’t do that… could we?”Report
Captain Ahab.Report
If you want to start to get to the bottom of this, the first question you should ask is “what is a CIA agent?” And I don’t say that just to be pedantic. Think about the different job functions that someone working at the CIA might have and the corresponding areas to which they belong. And then ask yourself which of those functions would be in an area to be collecting or interpreting intelligence on Trump. And more importantly, as “why?”
If you can come up with a reasonable answer to those questions, you’re on the road to figure out whether Moby is talking out of his *ss or not.Report
So it could be a low-level analyst who merely happens to enjoy the whole “scene” scene and got backstage and told Moby (truthfully) something to the effect of “oh, yeah! I’m with the CIA! This stuff is totally true! You should tell people that!”?
Yes. That could totally be the case too.Report
I would stand in line for this. There’s always room in life for this.Report
I remember an episode of the X Files where Mulder is following a chain of relationships, and bumps into Alex Trebek, and it is explained that in order to discredit conspiracy theorists, you throw in a connection that is so wildly bizarre and laughable, someone who makes absolutely no sense to the plot, that the entire thing gets laughed off.Report
“Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” .
Alex Trebek and Jesse Ventura were the Men in Black.
Seriously, one of the best episodes of X-Files, despite being….really not that much of an X-Files episode.Report
Po7: When it comes to making good, solid predictions about what the future holds, I’d say that Carlyle has a better track record than Fukuyama.Report
I’m still willing to bet that this rash of nationalist populism is temporary. When the very concrete gains from trade and migration disappear with those policies, people may learn better. People like to live comfortably and if they have to tolerate a few foreigners to do that they will.
Let me put a variant spin on fukuyama: Some version of welfare state capitalism is pretty much the end of history. You can be happy about it (thinking that this is progress) or you can be sad about it (thinking that this is some regression to the mean) and there may be backsliding here and there, but eventually we’ll all reach thereReport
I’m still willing to bet that this rash of nationalist populism is temporary.
I’d have to know the percentages and the downside before I’d be willing to make that bet.Report
I think nationalism and populism are deeply ingrained into the human person, for better or worse.
The task of those who want a tolerant liberal order is to propose an identity that is inclusive.
Because as it stands now, most populism is really just blood and soil racism dressed up in the clothes of patriotism; The boundary of national identity is almost completely overlapping with ethnic tribalism.Report
@chip-daniels
I think the best explanation I saw is that humans are group-ish. We want what is best or good for the groups we identify with. The issue then becomes how do we identify. Do we identify by class? by race? by religion? by gender identity? by sexuality? Something else? A mish-mash of everything?
My girlfriend and I are pretty similar: We are well educated, upper-middle class, secular, cosmopolitanish, professionals. Even then, we still have different comfort zones in some ways because she is Asian and I’m Jewish. I have a lot of non-Jewish friends but I’m sure they find my Judaism odd at times because it is a stand-out difference and I can get kind of grouchy at the thought of “everyone should do cultural/commercial Christmas” because I see it as a form of cultural dominance from the majority. I’m sure most people (even or especially secular types) think my ambivalence is out there as a belief.Report
Further:
This scene from Moscow On The Hudson, where a bunch of immigrants from all different cultures recite the “Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness” bit from the Declaration of Independence still touches me. It seems to very poignantly sum up the best aspirations of America.Report
As Saul notes, people are groupish. I doubt anything so complex as nationalism or populism is ingrained into persons. The thing about capitalist welfare states is it is rarely the case that a sufficiently large group is sufficiently unhappy for a sufficiently sustained period of time for things to diverge significantly and permanently away from liberal capitalism.
In a hundred years time, every country will be approximately liberal and approximately capitalist. In 20 years time, Saudi Arabia will be significantly more liberal and capitalist. China will be in at least certain respects more liberal, as will Russia.Report
I’d take the other side of that bet. If I lose, it’s still a win. (but I’m not going to lose)Report
A lot depends on how generous the welfare state distributions are in Murali’s futuristic scenario, but it seems reasonable to believe that as redistributive pressures on a society increase so will the desire to (ahem…) cleanse the population of malefactors and ne’er-do-wells.Report
We’ve been waiting for political reform to follow economic reform in the PRC for the majority of, or the entirety of, the lifetimes of everyone in this forum.
Russia has regressed on political liberalism over the past 20 years. A bet that it’s more politically liberal in or by 2038 than today counts on an extraordinary linked series of circumstances like the one that happened in Franco’s spain – a peaceful transfer of power after Putin becomes ex-ex-KGB, and that the person inheriting power decides to take a risk to open things up – and *then* has the wherewithal to make that move actually work.Report
I think the test is going to be Murali’s home country of Singapore. I am far from an expert but as I understand certain aspects of free speech are loosening up* and an LBGT movement is slowly starting up.
*When my girlfriend was a teenager in Singapore and wanted a CD by a Western band, she would need to make a request through a government body/censor. She told me that CDs were censored and the person making the request would get the bill. This doesn’t seem to happen anymore. When I have gone to Singapore, there did not seem to be censorship in terms of entertainment, art, and literature. There is still political censorship though. IIRC a teenage blogger criticized Lee Kwan Yew and was sentenced to a psychological evaluation.
Younger Singaporeans do not remember growing up in poor standards are more critical of the Lee Kwan Yew/PAP bargain of material needs being met in exchange for a loss of political civil liberty. I’d guess that China still has a lot of people who know real poverty.Report
The PAP is going to have to evolve (and probably will evolve) along a number of issues (e.g. civil rights and LGBT issues) if it is to retain voting share amongst the younger generation. I don’t expect the opposition to come into power in the next 30 years, but the PAP will certainly become more socially liberal. And Singapore, China and Saudi Arabia along with UAE and Qatar are going to have to if they wish to continue to play with other OECD countries (which they do). They cannot remain too far apart in terms of what civil rights or LGBT rights they protect. They might trend towards the more conservative part of the spectrum, but they cannot be too far outside the overton window which is becoming more liberal on these issues.Report
I would just note that there has been an LGBTQ movement in Singapore for a long time. Secretive and underground. but existing. Working to make things less impossible for themselves.
I know someone who was in said movement back in the 90s.
Not to nitpick, but the idea that there’s only a movement at the point where they become loud, out, and proud is a historical misstep, in my opinion.Report
I said in some respects. I expect better speech freedoms in the PRC in 20 years and at least some movements towards better LGBT equality.
In Russia, I would be surprised if the LGBT situation had not improved in 20 years. Though I don’t expect much improvement apart from that. Whoever replaces Putin is going to be younger and have more liberal attitudes with regards to that than him.Report
LGBT equality is measuring ‘more’ liberal rather narrowly imo. There’s also what is technically legal vs what is socially accepted (and the reverse, how much technically illegal but socially acceptable, until someone wants to us lawfare to make a point)
Though that said, LGBT equality does correlate with a lot of other measures of political and social liberalization, so it might not be the worst single yardstick measure for a range of things.
I would guess it’s as likely as not that a sucessor to Putin, born in the next generation, could be even more reactionary old time true believer religion than the generation that spent all its formative decades in an officially atheistic society. But that’s just a swag.Report
Define temporary. The years before World War I saw both an increase in welfare liberal capitalism, the Progressive Era in the United States, liberals in power in the UK, the 1905 Russian Revolution, and attempts to blunt capitalism’s worst aspects in many places. It was also an era of growing nationalism and after World War I, people shut the doors on welfare liberal capitalism despite really benefiting from it before hand.Report
The world wasn’t as tightly connected then as it is now. Information flows much faster and further than it ever did before. More importantly, trade networks are much more robust and extensive. Its just not going to be worth it to jeopardise all those profits. Enlightened self interest doesn’t always win out (because people can be irrational etc), but its a good bet on most things in the long run.About the only thing I don’t expect to see much change on is global warming and that’s because it deals with larger timescales than 100 yearsReport
People made the exact same arguments that you do in the years before the Great War. War is unprofitable because you can’t do raiding anymore, why go to war when you can enjoy the goods of the world peacefully? The business people and corporations didn’t want to threaten the profits back then either. Most non-wealthy people couldn’t care less about a rich man’s profits though. If people believe the capitalist free trade regime isn’t helping them because next to welfare is occurring, they are going to rebel against it.Report
I think we also have to accept the sobering truth of how powerful a force race/ ethnic tribalism can be, to the point where people make stupid, obviously self destructive choices to satisfy them.Report
Pertinent to this point;
The World Is Not Flat wherein the author writes powerfully against merging India into some “South Asia” entity.
I don’t understand his references, but his obvious passion is familiar and universal and needs to be taken as a real force.Report
The piece is a bit historically uninformed (or at least leaves out inconvenient historical wrinkles)
The political unity* of most of the subcontinent as it stands today is almost historically unprecedented. There is a slightly more accurate story to be told about cultural unity. The Brahminical religion aka Orthodox Hinduism did spread throughout the subcontinent, but the story of religion in India is more complex. It is a story of the early vedic religion interacting with the native religious beliefs and absorbing them. The religion evolves and fragments and merges again at different periods in history. Orthodox Hinduism is largely an urban religion. Many villages still to this day maintain their heterodox practices.
*Parts of south India have been incorporated under Indian empires in the past, but such incorporation has always been temporary i.e. at the height of the dynasty which lasted for an emperor or 3 at most. With the exception of a few great dynasties, the subcontinent has largely been fragmented between different kingdoms.Report
Tribalism is just the name of identity politics you can’t stand. It amuses me to see so many “race/gender/sexuality over class” liberals and leftists get made at the “class over race/gender/sexuality” liberals and leftists but rally against tribalism. Not all group identities are equally righteous but you really can’t control what group identities form.Report
I would say its more that group identities are powerful, for good and bad, sometimes at the same time.
The struggle is to control who is allowed in as part of the group, and who is left out and why.Report
So today’s meta theme from Will is: How to signal that Trump is terrible, but recognize he’s a liberal stalking horse.
[Po7]
I was not expecting what Fukuyama wrote on immigration restriction. “This would involve elites accepting the idea that states are territorial jurisdictions that have the right – indeed, the obligation as liberal democracies – to maintain control over their borders…. [this is the good part, it gets Trumpier after this, not that there’s anything wrong with that, or wait, yes there is, or no I’m just calling balls and strikes].”
[Po1] In which Kevin Drum projects and plays with Excel. What struck me as odd, was his projecting that the Democratic party was in the Liberal/Liberal box and not the Liberal/Conservative [Econ] box. But more importantly… his incomprehension of the Conservative/Liberal box bodes ill for his party. Maybe I don’t read Friedman/Dowd/Lane enough (or at all) to get the joke… but that joke might just bite him in the ass.Report
My problem with “you shouldn’t hate him for those reasons, you should hate him for *THESE* reasons!” is that it feels like an aesthetic argument rather than a moral one.Report
[Po7] Meh, I don’t think I’ve ever read any discourse on populism that uses fascism as a framework that was at all useful. Immigration is a policy like any other policy (*), and it requires bridging gaps btw/ elite and popular factions and between idealism and self-interest. Our politicians used to be much better at this. Also relevant:
(*) Other than open-border types that believe any policy that restricts movement is a subset of state violence.Report
Po1: Besides what Lee pointed out, there have always been immigrants who came over here and never learned to speak English. Some of my great-grandparents never learned to speak English. You see older Asian and Eastern European immigrants in the Bay Area who don’t speak English.
Po2: I would say in the American context you are roughly correct. Though Libertarianism outside of Hanley, Jason K, and maybe some others has plenty of people who are really socially conservative and they will tell you so.
Po3: What Lee said.Report
Po1: During the classic great waive of immigrants, many of them only intended to earn some money in the United States or elsewhere and then go home and buy a farm or some land. There was little incentive for them to learn. There was an IJ in New York whose grandmother was an Italian immigrant. She never really learned to speak English and got around the English language test when she naturalized by bringing all the metals her sons received in World War II fighting for the US to her interview.Report
[Po1] But you did. The emphasis was always on the 1st and succeeding generations, not the immigrants themselves. Immigrants are undertaking a very difficult and risky project and leverage all available resources including cultural enclaves in the new world; that’s expected and from everything I’ve seen culturally accepted in the US. The arguments begin with the subsequent generations. On the matter of assimilation, it ebbs and flows between soft and hard (post WWI) it leaned towards hard assimilation so that expectations were Gen1=Assimilated… by the 80s it was swinging back to soft assimilation. I don’t think there’s any particular perfect assimilation model, but absent any idea of assimilation, well… (and this is the first time I’ve ever written this) you should read Fukuyama.Report
Po6: I think Congress likes shutdowns, it makes for good theater.Report
The problem is not Congress. The problem is us. We like the theatre especially partisan types who are regular voters.
I don’t really get mad at politicians who propose wildly and obviously unconstitutional measures. I get mad at their constituents for rewarding them for their behavior. But I think teaching people to like and respect civil liberties is very hard especially when we get to the “freedom for the thing we hate” category. Our school system is designed to create workers, not good citizens. Allegedly during the Menendez corruption trial a juror asked “What’s a Senator?” Even if schools could teach about the importance of civil liberties and/or “freedom for the thing we hate”, it could be counter-acted by spheres outside of school like parents, peers, religious institutions, the media, etc.
Talking about free speech or liberty in an abstract vacuum is easy. Getting to the practice is very hard.Report
Well yeah, no one likes to perform to an empty, or angry house.Report
Andy Kaufman did.Report
I’ve noticed that articles about immigration, whether outright rants like Emina Melonic’s, or softer ones like Fukuyama’s, like to toss themselves softball questions pitting “open borders” against “sensible” immigration controls.
What is never asked, is where all these immigrants are coming from and why.
Reading these, one might think that suddenly, as if on some invisible cue like lemmings, millions of Syrians just suddenly rushed out their doors and made a beeline for Europe.
It’s a lot more comforting to loftily pontificate about national borders and sovereignty when it is done as some abstraction, a weightless discussion that has no actual consequences.
In this case, the consequence of restricting the flow of refugees into Europe is to literally let them die at sea, or forcing them back into the churning maw of war.
A war that the West is actively involved in and a participant of.Report
Re: Shutdowns
The obvious solution is to take the Portman rule and amend it so that you roll a die to determine how much the budgets should change and flip a coin to determine if the change is positive or negative.
We can then have a floor debate on how many sides the die ought to have.Report
Would the dice rolling commence before or after the annual inflation indexed increases are calculated?
If before, I think I could get the Kazzy plan a hearing.Report
Maybe we roll the die before and flip the coin after? Or vice versa?
“Shit… the 20-sided die came up 18. That could be awesome or disastrous depending on the coin flip! Let’s not take any chances… compromise!”Report
Po5 – Even if Roberts is going ‘moderate’, his moderateness will be to the right of Kennedy, which was to the right of O’Connor, which was to the right of whomever the swing vote was before her. I don’t remember, but I can read of a time when John Paul Stevens was part of a moderate bloc on the court.Report
I do, and it was pretty much the Burger Court and the early days of the Rehnquist Court. By the early 1990’s, Stevens would have been “mostly but not reliably liberal”.Report
[Po3]: Marissa Mayer, from TFA: “Our clients serve everyone, they just can’t custom design material that sends messages that violate their faith.”
Therefore they don’t serve everyone, Ms. Mayer.
The company that Mayer attempted to take a class from refused to serve her on the basis of its political values, and Mayer’s employer (The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the petitioner in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case pending before SCOTUS; Ms. Mayer is not personally listed as counsel of record on the petitioner’s brief but I’m quite certain that she’s worked on it) has political values that it believes are oppositional to its own. Mayer may argue to them that this really isn’t the case, and that’s one thing.
But it’s a different thing entirely to refuse service to a member of the public based on those peoples’ sexual orientation. One’s sexual orientation is a qualitatively different attribute than one’s political objectives.Report
Quite the clever stunt. Well played.Report
@burt-likko Respectfully and with full umbrage aimed at the cake baker in question, the client refuses service to certain people based not on their sexual orientation but on his religious beliefs. Unless we have proof he won’t sell them any kind of a cake at all saying anything at all, rather than specifically a cake celebrating marriage between two men?
I can call being against same-sex marriage on religious grounds idiotic and offensive all day (in fact there have been days that I basically spent doing that), but your country does have protections for religious choices that exceed those made for political choices, and it’s rather weak sauce to claim that religious choices are *actually* political just to create false parallels.
I really wish the left would let go of hanging their opinions about people on the question of what those people are willing to *write* or *perform* (cake decorating is an art, albeit a humble one), rather than what they are willing to *do*. I’m sure there are plenty of assholes refusing to serve gay people who aren’t making a big free speech religious stink about it – or for that matter secularly-owned halls refusing to rent to gay people who want to have wedding receptions in them – why don’t we go after them for a change?Report
AFAIK, this is the case for both the cake shop and the florist arguing a similar case. Both vendors were happy to sell the couple cakes and flower arrangements that were already made or which confirmed to a standard design (& said as much or previously had), but they refused to craft or decorate custom products for the wedding because they ran counter to deeply held religious beliefs.Report
Heck, forget refusing to rent halls for weddings – try refusing to rent to gay people flat out. Or refusing to acknowledge their right to pick up their non-biological but actual kid from school. Or refusing their duty of parental care to a minor under the age of 16 who ends up on the street because there’s no recourse for that minor to get financial support from parents who’ve kicked them out of the house. Etc etc etc etc. That stuff hasn’t stopped happening just because it is illegal now (well, in some states anyway).
I know these kinds of human rights abuses still exist in this country, and not just for gay people either, but because there’s already settled law, they seem to be taking a back seat in the nation’s attention to these more arcane matters of unsettled law…
it’s frustrating.Report
It took me until reading this comment a second time to realize this Marissa Mayer isn’t *that* Marissa Mayer.Report
And by the way- for some reason I can’t post with my regular email account.
I dunno if it is this site issue, or a Gravatar issue, or if Putin is trying to silence my voice of freedom.
But if someone can look into it I would appreciate it.Report
@will-truman @vikram-bath Can either of you look into this? I can see they went to spam but I have no idea why unless it’s that they mentioned the Turner Diaries…. maybe spam filters don’t like that? I suspect there is a less amusing issue though.
(@chip, I expect it’s the site issue… mostly resolved, but had to be hastily resolved therefore may require some further tinkering)Report
Although it would be awesome if it was Putin. To think an unassuming architect in a snappy fedora could stoke the rage of Putin…Report
About that mistaken nuke alert in Hawaii WaPo now says “The emergency worker who sent a false nuclear attack alert in Hawaii believed that a missile was truly bound for the state.”
From the linky: The emergency worker who sent a false public safety alert on Jan. 13 warning of an imminent nuclear attack against Hawaii believed that a ballistic missile was truly bound for the state after mishearing a recorded message as part of an unscheduled drill, according to a preliminary investigation by federal officials.
“unscheduled drill”. Riiiiiiight. What happened to the mis-click explanation? That one had legs.Report
To be honest, I thought that the “hacked” explanation was much, much more likely than the “pressed in earnest” explanation.Report
Further in the vein of “the conspiracy theorists were wrong to be right and the people who weren’t conspiracy theorists were right to be wrong”, there are now more “persons of interest” named in the Vegas shooting.
Man, that narrative keeps getting weirder.
And that’s *WITHOUT* getting into the whole (conspiracy-theorized) Saudi connection.Report
As Douglas Haigs go, his body count is pretty damned low.Report
Speaking of conspiracies and odd explanations
https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-thought-he-was-messaging-sean-hannity-when-he-offered-news-on-democrat-investigating-trump-russiaReport
Report
The whole thing just keeps getting weirder.Report
From what I understand, there was a State of the Union speech tonight.
And, from what I understand, the Democrats had a Kennedy standing in front of a car give the rebuttal.
Hey, if Rubio was there, Kennedy could have driven the car into Rubio’s water.Report
And if you were hoping for a joke that referenced Rubio without referencing Teddy, apparently Kennedy was drooling during his speech.
Sort of the opposite of Rubio’s problem.Report
Biting, relevant, and damning. Well done.Report
Really? I thought it focused on image to the exclusion of everything (or even anything!) the guy actually said.
I suppose it has that entirely in common with the “Rubio drinks water like there’s no tomorrow!” jokes, though.Report
Chappedaquidick?
(not mine)Report