Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
- George Orwell, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" (1946)
I have admired the quote above for years, but it wasn't until yesterday that I looked up the larger context. Often, well-loved quotes are taken out of context, and were never really intended to say what we hear in them today, so reading the whole paragraph or page or chapter can ruin the effect. But the context of this quote makes it even more relevant to the present moment:
Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. The rise and fall of empires, the disappearance of cultures and religions, are expected to happen with earthquake suddenness, and processes which have barely started are talked about as though they were already at an end.
This week's featured post is "Resisting, eventually". It describes my election hangover, and a corresponding unwillingness to commit to a resistance strategy, or even research one adequately.
This week everybody was still talking about Trump's nominations
Now that Matt Gaetz is gone, the next nominee likely to fall is Pete Hegseth, chosen by Trump to run the Pentagon. We've known for two weeks that he paid a woman to drop her accusation of sexual assault in 2017, but a single episode of sexual assault is almost a badge of honor in TrumpWorld, so his nomination was still viable.
But then Friday, the NYT published an email Hegseth received from his mother in 2018:
You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth. ... … On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself
Sunday, The New Yorker detailed a history of Hegseth's alcohol abuse and financial impropriety in addition to a pattern of sexual harassment. He headed two veteran-focused political groups, and each time was dismissed after overspending the organization's funds for drunken staff parties. Hegseth's drunken exploits include trying to get up on stage with the dancers at a strip club, and on several occasions being carried up to his room by co-workers.
The Republican senators whose votes Hegseth needs are probably impervious to sexual-assault claims, since they've already had to make so many excuses for Donald Trump's behavior. "Don't believe women" could be the party motto at this point. But a Defense Secretary who is often drunk and out-of-control is a different problem. From the New Yorker article:
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and the senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the report of Hegseth’s drinking as alarming and disqualifying. In a phone interview, Blumenthal, who currently leads the Senate committee that will review Hegseth’s nomination, told me, “Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure.” Blumenthal went on, “It’s dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in every issue of national security. He’s involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He’s the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take.”
It would be bad enough if Hegseth were the kind of drunk who just quietly falls asleep. But the stories about him point to a drunk who loses inhibitions and does stupid things.
The hits keep coming. Trump's nominee for FBI director is Kash Patel, whose main qualification is a slavish devotion to Trump.
The pattern here is something we often see from the Right: Democrats are falsely accused of something so that Republicans can "respond" by actually doing that very thing. In this case, the "something" is weaponizing the Justice Department. (The archetypal example is Fox News, whose right-wing bias parallels a grossly exaggerated notion of left-wing media bias. A completely different example is the Florida education system, which Governor DeSantis is turning into the indoctrination program he falsely claimed it already was. "DeSantis’s anti-education crusade is doubly authoritarian – most obviously in its use of state power to suppress ideas and information, but also in its more subtle assumption that teaching is ultimately about imposing doctrines of one sort or another.")
The Biden Justice Department was not weaponized. Every Trump investigation began with probable cause for suspecting an actual crime, and every indictment was backed by evidence that probably would have led to convictions if Trump-favoring judges had allowed the cases to go to trial. That's law enforcement, not weaponization.
But a Patel-led FBI and a Bondi-led Justice Department won't bother with niceties like probable cause and proof beyond reasonable doubt. Look for people to be investigated because they are Trump critics, and for rumors of wide-ranging conspiracies to regularly leak to Fox News. Most of these investigations won't lead to indictments, or even identification of the specific laws supposedly violated. Those that do will produce show trials that juries quickly dismiss with not-guilty verdicts.
The Durham investigation from Trump's first term is the model here. Trump claimed it would uncover "the crime of the century", and right-wing media regularly gave credence to Durham-inspired conspiracy theories that led to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But only minor figures went to trial, and they were charged with minor offenses falling far short of the vast conspiracies Durham was supposed to reveal. Only two went to trial, and they were quickly acquitted.
Such prosecutions have three goals: generating a series of enraging headlines inside the right-wing echo chamber, making targets spend vast sums of money on lawyers, and intimidating people who fear falling out of Trump's favor.
It's hard to sort out the pluses and minuses of Biden's pardon of his son Hunter. Undoubtedly, we will hear about this every time Trump makes a self-interested pardon, which he will do often, beginning with the January 6 rioters and seditionists.
But it's also clear that a Bondi/Patel Justice Department would never leave Hunter alone. His father let the Trump-appointed prosecutor do whatever he wanted, with the result that Hunter was prosecuted far more intensely than an ordinary person who committed the same offenses would have been.
Biden is anticipating injustice from the Trump administration and acting to avert it. It would be better to wait for the injustice to begin, so that it's obvious to everyone, but by then his power to mitigate it would have evaporated. He had to act now or not at all.
The larger cause of democracy probably would have been better served if Biden had been willing to sacrifice his son to it. (I'll let you decide whether there's a Christian metaphor worth inserting here.) But I don't blame him for not letting that happen.
This account of budget-director-nominee and Project 2025 author Russell Vought is genuinely scary. Basically, he believes we're in a "post-constitutional" situation. Our government has drifted so far from what he thinks the Constitution calls for that extra-constitutional presidential authority is needed to pull us back.
and Russia and its ally Syria
The Biden administration imposed a truly biting sanction on Russian banks two weeks ago, leading to this:
Against a backdrop of high inflation and fears over the value of the currency, Russia’s central bank has already lifted interest rates to 21% this year.
We'll learn a lot about the state of the world in January, when we see whether Trump starts relaxing Russian sanctions. If he does, and he doesn't get some major concession in return, we can be pretty sure that the rumors of kompromat are true.
It also looks like a bad time to be a Russian ally. Rebels in Syria have taken Aleppo, the country's second-largest city, with surprising ease. The Assad regime, which was propped up by Russian intervention when it seemed to be falling over a dozen years ago, now has few allies it can count on: Russia pulled its troops out to fight in Ukraine, while Iran and its various proxy groups have their hands full dealing with Israel.
Meanwhile, the former Soviet nation of Georgia has seen days of massive demonstrations against the ruling party, which has been leaning towards Russia and away from joining the EU.
and tariff skirmishes
This week included a major reminder of what a Trump administration is like. Trump will troll us by threatening to do something, get some kind of response from the targets of his threats, falsely claim that the response is a concession, and do a victory lap for "winning" the exchange. Nothing has actually happened, but he has exhausted his opponents and given his followers a fake "victory" to crow about.
Trump loves tariffs, because this is the area where presidential power is its most authoritarian. Congress has largely delegated this part of its taxing power to the President -- something the Supreme Court should (but won't) look at in view of its emerging non-delegation doctrine -- so he really can just decree something and see it happen.
Past presidents have used the tariff power for economic purposes: If we don't like how a country treats our exports, we'll put a tariff on their exports to us. Most of the time this has been a warning shot to induce another country to negotiate. But Trump views tariffs in a far more expansive way: If we don't like anything another country does, we can punish them by taxing their goods. (Of course, the tax will be paid by the American consumer, but it should hurt the targeted country's sales.)
So last Monday Trump tweeted that he would impose 25% across-the-board tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada unless they solve our immigration and drug problems.
This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!
He then had a conversation with the Mexican president, who told him that Mexico is already doing what he asked for (as part of an agreement negotiated by Biden). Trump then claimed victory. Does that mean the tariffs won't happen? Who can say?
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau also talked with Trump, but the outcome was less clear.
David Atkins summarized what I've been thinking:
The next four years are in large part going to be Trump taking credit for what Biden and Harris already did.
Inflation is headed down, fentanyl deaths are down, border apprehensions are down -- in a few months we're going to hear Trump claim all these accomplishments as his own.
and you also might be interested in ...
ProPublica has been reporting on women with problem pregnancies who have died because state abortion bans delayed their emergency treatment. (In general, life-of-the-mother exceptions are too narrow. Problems that don't seem immediately life-threatening can go south faster than doctors can react.) You might think that the states would respond by issuing new treatment guidelines to keep similar deaths from happening in the future, but their response is going in a different direction entirely: They're making it harder for the public to learn about such cases.
In other words, dead women is bad optics, not bad policy.
Paul Waldman points out something that's been bugging me too: Critiques of Kamala Harris' campaign or the Democratic message in general don't have much to do with the actual campaign or message. He's not arguing that everything was great and no changes are needed,
But if you want to alter your strategy in effective ways, you have to begin with a clear understanding of reality. Which is why it’s important to puncture some of the myths that keep getting repeated.
Short version: The election was very close, and not a groundswell repudiation of everything the Democrats stand for. Harris ran a centrist campaign rather than an identity-politics campaign. She focused her message on kitchen-table issues rather than culture-war issues. People can legitimately argue about why her message didn't get through to enough voters, but they shouldn't distort what her message actually was.
I continue to be skeptical of carbon-capture as a solution to climate change, but this piece of research does look promising.
They're sad and depressing, but you should check out the comments on this Jess Piper post to BlueSky:
What does a defunded school look like?
A constant turnover of new teachers because of the pay rate. No science lab. No band. No track. No real cafeteria, just a warming center for pre-packaged foods. No school nurse. A lack of bus drivers and AP/dual credit classes.
Ask me how I know…
Oklahoma and Texas can mandate that schools teach the Bible, but to get the results Christian nationalists are aiming for, eventually they're going to have to specify who teaches the Bible and how.
and let's close with something colorful
In my father-in-law's final days, my wife was managing his affairs, so his mail came to us. He died years ago and we've moved twice since, but somehow we still get fund-raising letters from a few of the bizarre-to-us Catholic organizations he supported. The mailings, when we don't just toss them unopened, can offer a glimpse into a different world.
At the most basic level, fund-raising letters are all the same no matter who they come from. Whether the bogeyman is Trump, the Deep State, or the Elders of Zion, somebody is doing something terrifying that there is still time to head off if you send money.
Recently a mailing from America Needs Fatima in Hanover, PA warned us about "the growth of Satanism and its expanding legion of followers" -- who never contact me despite all the weird web sites I wander through while I'm doing research for this blog. My wife collects Tarot decks, which seems like it should have put the Mark of the Beast on our mailbox a long time ago. But nothing.
Anyway, the growth of Satanism in general is too vague a development for a truly scary mailing, so ANF found something more specific: WalMart is helping the Satanists target America's children.
"How?" you might ask. Well, the WalMart web site (not the stores, apparently) offers a "Satanist" coloring book: Let's Summon Demons: A Creepy Coloring & Activity Book.
My first thought was that ANF was making this up, but journalism requires fact-checking, so I went to the WalMart web site and found it: available for $12.04.
HOME ALONE? PART OF AN OTHERWORLDLY CULT? Whether coloring alone or having fun together with others equally versed in the occult, paranormal, and witchcraft, this is the PERFECT coloring and activity book to pass the time until the great [your chaotic primordial god here] descends.
Sounds pretty serious, don't you think? It's also at Amazon, for the same $12.04, whose numerological significance escapes me. (BTW: I question the author's magical technique: The boy in the cover drawing is breaking the summoning circle.)
Might your unsuspecting-but-curious child happen across this by accident while browsing for other kinds of indoctrination? Not likely. I scrolled through many screens worth of WalMart-offered coloring books and didn't find it. Technically WalMart classifies it under "Other". Amazon says it's "Novelty".
However, if your child is already versed in summoning the occult via Google (as I just did), anything can happen.
And once they find it, they will know the name Steven Rhodes, through which they can conjure the Threadless marketing site, full of t-shirts, posters, and other products spawned by the same dark-and-twisted sense of humor. This would be a totally inappropriate place to look for Christmas gifts for your friends, so I recommend you stay away from it.
Don't thank me for that warning. Thank America Needs Fatima.
