Sunday, March 3, 2019

Christopher Demuth: Trump and the Revolt of the 'Somewheres'

Christopher Demuth of the Wall Street Journal came up with a sound explanation for the explosion we've seen in national ism in recent years. He terms it the Somewheres vs Anywheres:
"The harmed countrymen tend to be less-educated hinterlanders and members of the working class, who find representation in the nationalist movements. The shocked establishments—incumbent politicians, government careerists, media figures, corporate executives and intellectuals—have responded in striking unison. The political arrivistes, they insist, are ill-informed populists, xenophobic if not racist, inflamed by irrational hatred of immigrants, exhibiting authoritarian tendencies. Europe’s leading internationalists, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, have coordinated their actions and policies to keep the nationalist movements at bay. The synchronous counterattacks seem to validate the theory of a global elite.

"These developments have scrambled partisan alignments. The new divide is conventionally described in economic or regional terms, but it is best understood as social and cultural. The British political analyst David Goodhart, in his superb book 'The Road to Somewhere' (2017), describes the divide as the 'Anywheres' versus the 'Somewheres.'

"The Anywheres are cosmopolitan, educated, mobile and networked. Their lives center on communities of affinity rather than locality—friends and colleagues who may be anywhere on a given day. Their attachments to place are secondary; they tend to regard national differences as quaint, borders as nuisances, divergent regulations as irrational. Their politics are liberal, whether progressive or classical. The Anywheres are generally wealthier than the Somewheres, but they include many people of moderate income, such as junior employees of government agencies, schools and nonprofits.

"The Somewheres are rooted in local communities. Their jobs and weekends, their commitments and friendships and antagonisms, are part and parcel of their families, neighborhoods, clubs and congregations. Many work with their hands and on their feet. Whatever their partisan leanings, they tend to be socially conservative and patriotic and less disposed to vote with their feet."

And, of course, the reason for, why now?
"In recent decades, the U.S. Congress has delegated its lawmaking powers: voting by lopsided margins for goals such as clean air and equality of the sexes, while leaving the hard choices—the real legislating—to specialized executive-branch agencies. Lawmakers have abandoned regular budgeting and appropriations, weakening the “power of the purse.” They have stood by passively, often with palpable relief, as courts have decreed resolutions of contentious issues of sexual autonomy and moral obligation that were previously matters for legislative deliberation. National legislatures in Europe and the U.K. have done the same thing, with the added twist that they have delegated considerable powers to the European Union’s supernational bureaucracies and courts.

"The conventional criticism of these developments is that they evade democratic accountability and lead to overregulation and “agency capture” by interest groups. Administrative agencies can make rules—de facto laws—in much greater profusion than elected representatives. Agencies often go to extremes, or cut deals among insider groups, that could never survive a legislative vote. Delegation produces more law than most citizens want, and often objectively bad law. But bureaucrats cannot be voted out of office."




Sunday, January 27, 2019

Andrew Sullivan on the Covington Incident In DC

Andrew Sullivan's take on the incident involving the kids from Covington Catholic High School and Native American activist Nathan Phillips that appeared in New York Magazine on January 25.
"Yes, the boys did chant some school riffs; I’m sure some of those joining in the Native American drumming and chanting were doing it partly in mockery, but others may have just been rolling with it. Yes, they should not have been wearing MAGA hats to a pro-life march. They aren’t angels; they’re teenage boys. But they were also subjected for quite a while to a racist, anti-Catholic, homophobic tirade on a loudspeaker, which would be more than most of us urbanites could bear — and they’re adolescents literally off the bus from Kentucky. I heard no slurs back. They stayed there because they were waiting for a bus, not to intimidate anyone.

"To put it bluntly: They were 16-year-olds subjected to verbal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being bigots. It just beggars belief that the same liberals who fret about 'micro-aggressions' for 20-somethings were able to see 16-year-olds absorbing the worst racist garbage from religious bigots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face."

Glenn Reynolds: Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad

Glenn Reynolds from his weekly column in USA Today on January 15th:
"But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements.  And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change."

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Jeffrey Epstein Revisited

The Miami Herald published an investigative series into billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically, his fondness for girls as young as thirteen. I might be too cynical, but this may indicate that the Clinton's are finally going to exit the national stage. If this story, and Bill Clinton's connection to it, isn't horrifying enough, then I don't know what could be.
We’re talking underage girls, some as young as 13, troubled children, children living in foster care, children of addicts and abusers, children of poverty and molestation, children who were homeless runaways, children who, in the early 2000s, were lured by promises of easy money to the Palm Beach estate of Jeffrey Epstein, a multimillionaire money manager whose friends included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. There, they say they would massage him or watch him masturbate, perform oral sex or have intercourse. Epstein, they say, went through as many as three girls a day. Then those girls were sent to recruit others.

And as retired Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, who supervised the 2005 police investigation into this crime, told the Herald, “This was not a ‘he said, she said’ situation. This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ — and the ‘shes’ all basically told the same story.” Moreover, the stories were backed up by a trove of physical evidence. Epstein could have been put away for life.

Instead, Miami federal prosecutor Alexander Acosta offered the rich man a deal. He would plead guilty to just two charges of prostitution involving one 14-year-old girl. An ongoing FBI investigation would be shut down. He would serve 13 months.

Hundreds of girls. Thirteen months.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Jonah Goldberg - Election Double Standards

I think this trend has existed longer than this year, but Jonah Goldberg made a good point about double standards in close elections.

The final lesson: There is a massive double standard in the national conversation when it comes to election results and irregularities.

When Republicans suggest Democrats are up to no good, it is universally decried as a paranoid, craven or “openly authoritarian” attempt to delegitimize an election. When Democrats suggest an election was stolen, it’s a grave warning of a crisis that should require “international election monitors,” in the words of Dan Rather.

When Republicans graciously concede, as Rep. Martha McSally did in Arizona, it’s an example of decency and civility. “I give McSally credit for a graceful concession. But let’s be clear: It only stands out because of the moral sludge of Trumpism in which any show of grace or honorable conduct is shocking,” tweeted Josh Marshall, the editor of the Talking Points Memo. “When you lose, you don’t lie about it or attack the voting process. You concede & move on.”

But when Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a three-term Democrat, refused to concede and move on, insisting that Scott was trying to steal victory, liberals didn’t call him a sore loser. And when Abrams refused to concede in Georgia and (still) refuses to say that Kemp is a legitimate governor, it’s hailed as heroic speaking truth to power.

Such double standards are poisonous and contagious. Which is why you can be sure you’ll hear even more of this in 2020 — and not just from Donald Trump.

Friday, November 23, 2018

Make Up Your Mind, Senator Schumer

There's been a big flap over Donald Trump calling out the 9th Circuit and Chief Justice Roberts defending an independent judiciary. Maybe the Senate Minority Leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D, NY) should have taken the opportunity to not tweet. This is how you make Trump look good. Or at least a normal politician.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Texas Is About to Create OPEC's Worst Nightmare

The United States is quickly becoming a lot less reliant on oil from the Persian Gulf. A piece published at Bloomberg points out how total US petroleum production is rising at the fastest rate in 98 years.
"By the end of 2019, total U.S. oil production -- including so-called natural gas liquids used in the petrochemical industry -- is expected to rise to 17.4 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. At that level, American net imports of petroleum will fall in December 2019 to 320,000 barrels a day, the lowest since 1949, when Harry Truman was in the White House. In the oil-trading community, the expectation is that, perhaps for just a single week, the U.S. will become a net oil exporter, something that hasn’t happened for nearly 75 years."

Christopher Demuth: Trump and the Revolt of the 'Somewheres'

Christopher Demuth of the Wall Street Journal came up with a sound explanation for the explosion we've seen in national ism in recent ye...