As many commentators have noted, Americans live in news bubbles that are almost impervious to one another. Quite obviously I do. My bubble consists of CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post online, DailyKos, TPM, and a variety of other sites on the progressive or left side. Yesterday, it occurred to me to spend a few minutes watching OAN (One American News), a far right network and online presence that has been pushing the conspiracy theories concerning the election. What did I find? To put it as simply as I can, I found a professionally produced visually attractive online network whose news anchors are as believable and well turned out as those on the sites I usually frequent. There was nothing visually or otherwise in the presentation that would give me any doubt about its plausibility save for the fact that what was being said was nonsense.
I do not want to go all philosophically freaky about the social definition of reality and so forth but it is worth reporting that it is not at all difficult to understand how someone who gets his or her news from this and similar sites could believe quite confidently that the election had been stolen.
I do not for a moment believe that the solution to this problem is better education or reaching across the aisle or resurrecting superannuated middle-of-the-roaders to talk about the good old days when Tip O'Neill struck deals with Ronald Reagan. Nor do I think that revolution is the solution. As I have observed before, the other side has most of the guns. Fortunately we are on the right side of demography and in the end that may be our very best bet. Since demography is a long game, I probably will not live long enough to see the fourth quarter or the ninth inning or whatever is the appropriate metaphor but it is nice to think that time is on our side. Of course, that assumes we get climate change under control. But that is a nightmare for another post.
27 comments:
"Fortunately we are on the right side of demography and in the end that may be our very best bet."
I think it was in 2002 that John Judis predicted the rise of a permanent democratic majority. And since then the Dems have lost 2 presidential elections, plus the one just before he made that statement.
On the other hand, the Democrats have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. It's clear then that the key issue will be overcoming the districting and electoral college deficits.
I think it would be a mistake to assume that, based on how current demographics vote, and the change in the proportions of those demographics, that the right will naturally recede. For one, it's clear that second, third, fourth generation migrants quickly begin to vote and behave like the average citizen. And second of all, the platform and target audiences of political parties and movements can quickly shift. I don't think it is at all far fetched to imagine (not for the next election, but maybe the one after) a Republican platform which drops some of the racial rhetoric, maybe nominates an hispanic candidate for the Presidency, ramps up the economic and foreign-policy nationalism, and suddenly that begins to look like a very appealing party for some current and potential future Democratic voters.
The clear gap in the electoral market which the Republicans were so close to committing to is that socially authoritarian/conservative, economically majoritarian quarter of the political sphere. I'm convinced that if Trump had leaned even further into his stimulus package the election would have been far closer. He had an opportunity to hand out free money weeks before the election, every politician's dream!
I worry that Biden will combine the two least popular parts of the Democratic broad church- economic centrism/neoliberalism, and social progressivism. That is not at all to castigate social progressivism- as the last year has shown, there is clearly some kind of an appetite for that, and more importantly there is important work to be done on that front. But it's clear that it is extremely polarizing, and for those voters who I think are ripe for this new right but currently lean Democrat- mostly male, younger than you might think, including many ethnic minorities, the social progressivism WITHOUT the economic majoritarianism will lead to the question: "what are you doing for my lot?".
And simultaneously, the inevitable antagonism that the neoliberal economics (and foreign policy I suppose as well) of this hypothetical administration will cause with the Left of the party will only reduce enthusiasm, ground game, and the grassroots. And it will open the door for what I believe is an extremely potent combination of economic and political nationalism.
Hopefully this will not come to pass, partly because Biden will acquiesce a little on the economics to his grassroots, partly because the Republican's without Trump will probably migrate back to their Tea party economics (or, make it visible again).
To come full circle, the one area the Democrats do have a temporarily irreversible demographic advantage is the growing Urban population. I think the left-leaning nature of cities is something to do with the built environment, the people, the economy and so on. And I don't think this is something that will be easily overruled. Until the next big political realignment occurs.
"But that is a nightmare for another post."
In my darkest nights, the acceleration of climate change is the true legacy of the Trump years. We had probably already lost the climate change battle, but Trump hastened and ensured our defeat.
My 9 year old will inherit a broken world, and income redistribution and electoral fairness pale in comparison to our ecological disaster. They are still important, and we will still fight for them, but we should simultaneously be working toward increased local self-sufficiency and de-growth.
The four years which we lost under Trump may have resulted in irreversible climate change complications. From “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells (2020), pp. 24-25:
“Some climate cascades will unfold at the global level – cascades so large their effects will seem, by the curious legerdemain of environmental change, imperceptible. A warming planet leads to melting Arctic ice, which means less sunlight reflected back to the sun and more absorbed by a planet warming faster still, which means an ocean less able to absorb atmospheric carbon and so a planet warming faster still. A warming planet will also melt Arctic permafrost, which contains 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the earth’s atmosphere, and some of which, when it thaws and is released, may evaporate as methane, which is thirty-four times as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming blanket as carbon dioxide when judged on the timescale of a century; when judged on the timescale of two decades, it is eighty-six times as powerful. A hotter planet is, on net, bad for plant life, which means what is called ‘forest dieback’ – the decline and retreat of jungle basins as big as countries and woods that sprawl for so many miles they used to contain whole folklores – which means a dramatic stripping-back of the planet’s natural ability to absorb carbon and turn it into oxygen, which means still hotter temperatures, which means more dieback, and so on. Higher temperatures means more forest fires means fewer trees means less carbon absorption, means more carbon in the atmosphere, means a hotter planet still – and so on. A warmer planet means more water vapor in the atmosphere, and, water vapor being a greenhouse gas, this brings higher temperatures still – and so on. Warmer oceans can absorb less heat, which means more stays in the air, and contain less oxygen, which is doom for phytoplankton – which does for the ocean what plants do on land, eating carbon and producing oxygen – which leaves us with more carbon, which heats the planet further. And so on. …We know what a best-case outcome for climate change looks like, however unrealistic, because it quite closely resembles the world as we live on it today. But we have not yet begun to contemplate those cascades that may bring us to the infernal range of the bell curve.”
I think AJH’s warning, that one should not place too much hope on demographic change, is right, as is his warning that it is possible that the incoming Democratic administration will opt to try to square economic neoliberalism with social progressivism. I wish he/she had said a bit more about its possible foreign policy approach—“America is back” rhetoric, America at “the head of the table”, America as resuming its role as “world leader” should give one pause as we see so many of the liberal interventionists being elevated to important roles (though the elevation of Flournoy seems to be running into difficulties).
But back to that reliance on demographic change. Isn’t there lurking here a notion that progress is inevitable? Maybe it’s time to run out that well-worn urging: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will?
Whatever the far future holds, the near future will be driven by our failing Constitution and climate change. To have a chance we needed a 1932 sized political realignment.
R McD,
I agree with you about "America is back". It's the liberal interventionist version of
Make America Great Again.
R McD,
I am not as astute when it comes to American foreign policy as when it comes to generic electoral politics., which is why I didn't go into detail on the matter. I think you are right to worry about the issue.
One thing that I'd like to push back on though. As I see it, Trump never wanted to relinquish the "America as World Leader" mentality. I think he just saw that role differently. As a (albeit terrible) business man, the market leader doesn't necessarily have to flex their muscles 24/7. They don't have to organize and speak at the sector conferences. Instead, they get the best deal for their company, they quietly assert dominance over the things which matter directly to them. They get invited to the conference and they get invited to make the after dinner speech.
Whether or not you think this is the correct way to go about doing your foreign policy, given the premise that you want to maintain America's position at the top of the table, doesn't mean that the Biden liberals uniquely want to have America operate as the world leader. I just think that Trump saw that world leader role in such a different light that from the outside it looks like he abandoned the idea entirely.
(For what it's worth, Trump's zero-sum approach to business is even more terrible an approach to foreign policy, even if you start out with the "Natural World Police" sort of view which many a Washington palm greaser does.
Read Policy Tensor on the partisan class divide, sclerotic dolts.
I don’t disagree, AJH, regarding Trump’s approach to the rest of the world. But i do worry that the relief with which Trump’s departure—and yes, i think it will actually happen—is being greeted might cause a lot of people to imagine that the foreign policies pursued by more orthodox American leaders are somehow acceptable. I’m always struck by the fact that, with a few exceptions, there hasn’t been much of an anti-war, anti-imperialist movement in this country.
I am of course not at all clear what signs there are that it is a good idea to bet your money on the last quarter of the game. Unless you believe the 'WELTGEIST' plays in a team as a quaterback and wide receiver in one person.
Of course, it is also not clear to me how it cannot be education that (to stay in the picture) at least increases the chance that the coach, team and spectators understand the rules of the game a little bit better.
The Biden foreign policy, as it unfolds, is unlikely to find a great deal of favor w most of the commenters here, but one can expect at least a couple of improvements over Trump's foreign policy, for instance: (1) somewhat more distance from Netanyahu and from Mohammad bin Salman in S. Arabia, w a correspondingly, on the first pt, slightly less lopsided approach to I/P conflict; (2) more multilateralism, less dissing of intl orgs such as the WHO, etc.
But the main lines of foreign policy tend not to vary drastically from one admin to the next. There will be real differences of both tone and substance, but they will likely not much affect the basic defense posture, # of mil bases around the world, size of mil budget etc.
This guy is so f… despicable and irritating. Facts don’t matter; evidence doesn’t matter. He belongs in an institution for the insane.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/11/26/trump-thanksgiving-inauguration-biden-question-vpx.cnn
January 20 can’t come soon enough.
I heard parts of that on C-Span radio. The basic "logic" seems to be: Biden could not possibly have gotten that many votes, bc "this is not a candidate" who cd possibly have outperformed Obama, e.g., in certain respects. Hence, the "logic" continues, since Biden "could not" have gotten that many votes, he did not get that many votes. In Trumpian "logic," QED.
As readers of this blog have undoubtedly learned, in a 5-4 vote on Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s restrictions on attendance at houses of worship as violating the 1st Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. The decision demonstrated the impact of Amy Comy Barrett’s appointment to the Court, since Justice Roberts sided with the minority. The decision reversed a prior decision in a similar case relating to restrictions imposed by California. In that case, the vote was 5-4 in the opposite direction, with J. Ginsburg siding with the majority sustaining the constitutionality of the California restrictions.
The decision spurred me to do a bit more research on ways in which the Court can be reformed in order to blunt the force of the now conservative majority. And I found that one of the measures which I had in the past discredited as infeasible actually has legs. And that proposal is the imposition of term limits. Article III of the Constitution states, “The judges, both of the supreme court and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour … .” While the “good Behavior” language has been interpreted to mean that removal would require impeachment, the reference to “their Offices” has persuaded some legal scholars that the “Offices” in question can be regulated by Congress. For example, there are currently two retired Supreme Court Justices who still retain their nominal Office and from time to time serve as judges on Courts of Appeal: Justices O’Connor and Souter. Congress could pass legislation imposing term limits on all future S. Ct. appointees. See https://earthrights.org/blog/the-u-s-supreme-court-is-broken-heres-how-to-fix-it/ Another article suggests that Congress has the authority to assign sitting Supreme Court Justices to senior status, like Justices O’Connor and Souter, without violating the Constitution, since they would still be holding “Office.” See https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/opinions/supreme-court-term-limits-law-roosevelt-vassilas/index.html. All this depends, of course, on the Democrats winning both Senate
seats that are to be determined in the Georgia run-off in January.
Post-script:
A co-author of the latter article is Kermit Roosevelt III, the great, great grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt. He is also a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Las School, and therefore a colleague of Tobias Wolff, Prof. Wolff’s son.
Here's another insightful article that I think the historians, economists, psychologists, sociologists and political scientists among you will appreciate. The title. "The New Superfluous Men," strikes me as a play on Albert Nock's Autobiography of a Superfluous Man, whose work I am mortified to admit impressed my much younger self. Think of the article as an anticoagulant for the sclerotic, clot ridden brain. At the very least, if you don't bother to read it I will have violated Matthew KJV 7.6-6. More to the point, it explains some of the current and historical economic and cultural pressures that foster right-wing extremism and authoritarianism.
MS
My impression is that O'Connor's health does not permit her to sit occasionally on courts of appeals or do anything comparable. I recall vaguely that she made a public statement about this some time ago. Maybe a glance at the Wikipedia entry for her wd pick it up.
LFC,
David Souter still sits on Circuit Court panels. I never understood why he retired. I was always impressed with his S. Ct. decisions – well reasoned, well written. Perhaps not surprising, since he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard as a philosophy major. His senior thesis was on (LFC, you will get a kick out of this) logical positivism and the jurisprudence of Oliver Wendell Holmes. It would be interesting to learn how he connected A. J. Ayer and the thought of Holmes.
Sclerotic Dolt,
Thank you for the link to the article. It is quite interesting. One factor that the article does not discuss regarding the growing alienation and misogyny of men is the data that indicates that male sperm counts and motility are decreasing. Some biologists also speculate that the Y-chromosome is deteriorating, and that in the future women may be able to procreate without men, producing only females. (I am not quite sure how this would work.) No more McConnells; no more Trumps; no more …. (My sexism cannot resist pointing out that this would also mean there would be no more Newtons, Einsteins, Eulers, Kants, etc.)
MS
I think Souter retired because he has other interests (apparently reads a lot of history etc, hikes, and so on) and he wanted more time to pursue them while he was still physically and mentally able to do so. Also, he may simply have had enough of writing opinions. A not insignificant portion of the Sup Ct docket consists of dry, technical cases and he may just have had it and decided he didn't want to do this until the end of his life. Very understandable, I think.
For what it is worth, he was my tutee in 1959-1960.
MS, you have a good memory. The debate among evolutionary psychologists and others about the decline of the Y chromosome was from over a decade ago. However, that debate debate seems to have abated.
The author didn't pursue the decline in sperm motility for good reason: it's either irrelevant, a minor factor if it has any effect, or else it supports his case. If it supports his case, it belongs in a more elaborated treatment, with credit to you along with your sperm count, and mine also if that's any consolation.
I meant to write evolutionary biologists, not evolutionary psychologists--I was the Anonymous above.
Speaking of nuclear war (which we weren't, but it's a recurring topic here), the author mentions that war no longer serves the function of eliminating "excess masculinity." There was an article in Scientific American decades ago that offended my adolescent sensibilities when it noted, not without a hint of moral condemnation, that unlike conventional warfare, women are equally targeted by nuclear war. So much for eliminating excess masculinity. But it had a point, and who knows: that females are equally targeted may just have a deterrent effect. If they weren't equal targets, my radioactive ashes would already be circulating in the atmosphere...
Out of curiosity, I did a search to determine how many majority opinions J. Souter wrote, how many concurrences and how many dissents. J. Souter served as Associate Justice for 19 years, from 1990-2009. In that time period he wrote 237 majority opinions; 120 concurrences; and 148 dissents. This is an average of 12 majority opinions per year, and 26 opinions per year overall. This is a phenomenal output, considering the amount of work involved in reviewing each appeal – reading all of the parties’ briefs and reply briefs; the briefs written by amici curiae; reviewing all of the principal cases cited in the briefs; reviewing all of the documents, depositions, trial transcripts associated with the case. Even given the assistance of 4-5 law clerks, this requires an enormous amount of reading and analyzing. And then to proceed to write a readable opinion which explains all of the salient facts in the case and provides a cogent analysis of the applicable law is a substantial undertaking.
Among J. Souter’s more significant majority opinions was his opinion in Bd. of Ed. Of Kiryas Joel School Dist. V. Grumet, which reinforced the separation of church and state; Kyle v. Whitley, in which the Court held the criminal defendant’s conviction had to be overturned because the State withheld material evidence from the defense counsel; Edelman v. Lynchburg College, in which the Court upheld the relation back rule under Title VII, which allowed a charge of discrimination filed outside of the deadline to relate back to earlier discriminatory actions. Significant dissents include Cohen v. Cowles Media, in which the Court held that the 1st Amendment did not preclude the plaintiff from collecting damages for a newspaper’s breach of a promise of confidentiality; Garcetti v. Ceballos, which placed limits on the free speech rights of public employees; and Bush v. Gore (no explanation required).
I watch many of the same websites as you. Try Fox News. They manage to expand trivia into major news.
As a Marxist and anarchist, are there any media outside of the liberal consensus media that you rely on and would recommend?
You might want to check out "Rising with Krystal & Saagar" on Youtube. I have my criticisms, but their reporting has good critiques of legacy media and seems to value heterodox viewpoints.
Krystal Ball is definitely an MVP, and their show has also been covered in the past by outlets such as Jacobinmag: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/krystal-ball-rising-the-hill-msnbc
Link to The Hill's channel here, where their stuff is usually uploaded as playlists: https://www.youtube.com/c/thehill/playlists
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