Politics – Page 10 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – February 28, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Wiggly Bridge, York, ME – February 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo

Wrongo intended to write about domestic issues today. One domestic issue is how Republicans and the Right-wing media pivoted over the weekend from being pro-Putin and his War, to now saying Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine. Is that proof that the sanctions are working?

It’s hard to turn away today from Ukraine news, despite knowing that Biden’s State of the Union (SOTU) speech is tomorrow night. The Republican reply will be given by Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds. This happens at a time when there are big differences of opinion about the most important issues facing the nation by Democrats and Republicans.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, 71% of US adults rated strengthening the economy as a top policy priority, followed by reducing health care costs (61%), addressing the coronavirus (60%), improving education (58%) and securing Social Security (57%). The survey was conducted between Jan. 10-17, 2022 among 5,128 adults.

But as expected, the top issues were very different for those who identified as a Republican or as a Democrat. When asked which issues “should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year,” the top five regarded as most important by Democrats were:

Top 5 priorities, according to Democrats (percent saying issue should be a top priority)

Dealing with the coronavirus outbreak (80%)
Reducing health care costs (69%)
Improving the educational system (66%)
Dealing with global climate change (65%)
Strengthening the nation’s economy (63%)

Here’s the Republicans’ top-five list:

Top 5 priorities, according to Republicans (percent saying issue should be a top priority)

Strengthening the nation’s economy (82%)
Dealing with the issue of immigration (67%)
Defending the country from future terrorist attacks (65%)
Reducing the budget deficit (63%)
Reducing crime (60%)

Strengthening the nation’s economy is the only priority that both Democrats and Republicans rank among the most important. Two of the Democrats’ top priorities are among the five lowest-priority issues for Republicans. Only 11% of Republicans think global climate change should be a priority (vs. 65% of Democrats). Just 35% of Republicans think dealing with the coronavirus outbreak should be a priority (vs. 80% of Democrats).

Conversely, two of the Republicans’ top priorities are among the five lowest-priority issues for Democrats. Only 35% of Democrats think immigration should be a priority (vs. 67% of Republicans). Just 31% of Democrats say the budget deficit should be a priority (vs. 63% of Republicans).

All of this may be on display at the SOTU and the Republican reply on Tuesday.

Returning to Ukraine, it’s reported that Ukraine and Russia have agreed to have low-level delegations meet, hosted by Belarus, to discuss ending the war. It’s unclear what exactly might be achieved from these negotiations, given that Putin’s War appears to be aimed largely at removing Zelensky from power.

Finally, assuming that Russia wins either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, that will almost certainly be followed by a Ukrainian insurgency supported by NATO. The US military knows a lot about how many troops it takes to hold ground when most of the locals want you dead.

Many military studies say that the number needed is 10 troops to one insurgent. From The Dupuy Institute (TDI): (Brackets by Wrongo)

“…TDI amassed data on 109 post-World War II insurgencies, interventions, and peacekeeping operations between 2004 and 2009. [TDI]…found that….While overwhelming numbers were not required to defeat an insurgency, force ratios above 10-to-1 nearly always produced a counterinsurgent victory. Conversely, lower force ratios did not preclude success, but conflicts with two or fewer counterinsurgents per insurgent greatly favored an insurgent victory.”

Remember in this case the insurgents would be Ukrainians, and counterinsurgents the Russians. More from TDI:

“When force ratios were assessed together with the nature of the motivation for the insurgency, TDI found that….when facing broadly popular insurgencies, counterinsurgents lost every time they possessed a force ratio advantage of 5-1 or less, failed half the time with odds between 6-1 and 10-1, but succeeded three-quarters of the time when outnumbering the insurgents by 10-1 or more.”

Ukraine’s pre-war population was 44 million. Let’s assume that 20% would support an insurgency, and that 2% would participate in an insurgency. That would be 176k Ukrainian insurgents. Following the 10-1 ratio would mean Russia would need to keep 1.76 million troops on the ground to win, an unsupportable number. Cutting the number of insurgents in half would mean Russia would need 880k troops to occupy Ukraine, still an unsupportable number.

This could mean that an insurgency in Ukraine could succeed as easily as it did in Afghanistan.

Time to wake up Putin! You might win before you lose in Ukraine. To help you wake up, watch the Saturday Night Live open, where the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York performed “Prayer for Ukraine”:

Kinda makes you tear up.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 13, 2022

Have you given any thought to the inconsistency between how Whoopi Goldberg was treated for her comment about the holocaust, and how Joe Rogan has been treated for his um, body of work? Whoopi was condemned by the left and right. She was appropriately suspended from her position as a host of ABC’s The View. She later apologized for the hurtful inference in her remarks.

With Rogan, after the flap over his COVID misinformation, it came to light that dozens of his episodes were quietly removed from Spotify because they featured Rogan using the N-word. To date, Spotify has yanked more than 100 of his episodes. But Rogan wasn’t suspended or “cancelled” by Spotify. Still, he’s held up on the Right as another victim of leftist cancel culture.

The artists who left Spotify weren’t trying to “cancel” Rogan. They just wouldn’t continue being associated with a platform that promoted him. Both the artists and Spotify are making free-market business decisions that they have every right to make.

That’s an idea that you’d think would be vigorously supported by Conservatives.

The outcry on the Right about “cancel culture” comes at a time when they are working to outlaw Critical Race Theory, overturn elections, enact legislation to deny the vote to millions of Americans, and ban books. It’s clear who’s doing the cancelling in America.

Those who defend Rogan say he’s simply providing a forum. Sure, he interviews kooks and sleazes, but he also interviews some reasonable folks. So he’s presenting “both sides“. The other side of a fact is a lie. And if you put a lie on an equal footing with the truth, you give the lie credibility. This is a cardinal sin that the media have been committing for decades. On to cartoons.

The massive self-deception the Right Wing practices while copying Nazi tactics:

Trump’s monument on the Mall:

RNC censures two of its own, says many of its own are totally fine:

Mitch the turtle takes RNC to task for its censure, also says Trump is wrong:

Russia’s about to bite off more than it can chew:

The end of mask mandates is political signaling. We’ll soon know if this calculated risk works:

Should the Mainstream Media Stay Neutral?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise with sea smoke, Curtis Island Lighthouse, Camden ME – January 2022 photo by Daniel F Dishner. Sea smoke forms on Penobscot Bay when the air temperature is colder than the water temperature.

On Tuesday, Wrongo took aim at the New York Times for it’s confusing editorial that misstated how to use an economic tool, and then went on to use that tool incorrectly.

The media, including the NYT, have become a source of both misinformation and disinformation. We really have two media, the mainstream one and the right-wing one. Although most of the disinformation is centered in the right-wing media, it’s becoming less clear to Wrongo that, at present, the mainstream media can (or will) help to defend our democracy.

If you doubt that, look at the November Marist College poll which found, by 42% to 41%, that American adults see the Democratic Party as a greater threat to democracy than the GOP.

The broader results were that 81% of Americans believed there is a “serious threat” to our democracy, including 89% of Republicans, 80% of independents, and 79% of Democrats. That was the poll’s headline. But buried in the cross-tabs was the answer to which Party presents the bigger threat – the 42% to 41% split.

This is mostly the result of our media that defaults to sensationalism rather than trying to explain complex issues. One group slavishly supports a GOP that is full of cranks, bigots, conspiracy theorists, and careerist politicians with flamethrowers. They’re also the media that say things like “intolerance of racism is worse than racism”.

The other side makes a pretense of non-partisanship while echoing many right-wing talking points.

We’ve learned over the past few years that the right-wing media has more control over setting the national agenda than the mainstream press does. The idea that the Party that’s trying to protect and expand voting rights is wrecking democracy isn’t just a misconception—it’s the result of an orchestrated assault on reality. And nearly half of Americans believe it.

In early December, Dana Milbank wrote in the WaPo about how the media has treated Biden as badly as – or worse than – Trump. Milbank had a data analytics company examine more than 200,000 mainstream news articles about both the Trump and Biden presidencies. Milbank wrote that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“During 2020, when the Trump administration’s response to and dishonesty about the pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, when he refused to denounce white supremacists at a debate and launched serial assaults on democracy, he got slightly more favorable coverage in the mainstream media than Biden has received since August.”

Remember that Milbank’s review covered articles and mentions in the mainstream press. Milbank concludes by saying:

“We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative. And we in the news media, collectively, have given equal, if not slightly more favorable, treatment to the authoritarians.”

Does the mainstream media have the power to try to counter this? The big question is how will the mainstream press cover the 2022 mid-terms and 2024 presidential campaign?

People want to be light and breezy, but Wrongo‘s brand is accuracy. Things have been really bleak for many years. And Wrongo has become short-tempered with those in the media who continue to deny just how deep the hole has become.

After the 2020 election, America had a chance to recover from the anti-establishment efforts of Trump’s administration. It was clear that Biden wouldn’t be able to do all that much, because of the slender Democratic majorities in both Houses.

It was a gamble for Biden and the Democrats to wrap every promise into one big bill that would set us on a course for changing the “economic paradigm”. In the end, that was a failure. Governing isn’t simple, especially with such narrow majorities.

And that’s where Democrats are now, paying a heavy price for overpromising and Biden’s naive expectations that he would work magic with Republicans getting some of them to vote for his agenda.

Biden and the Dems could still rebound. Passing a smaller, more focused version of Build Back Better, along with an easing of inflation, and a return to something like normal on the virus front could bring a fall comeback wave.

But it will also take a mainstream media that understands and accepts its role with a resolve at least equal to that of the right-wing media.

Let’s close with a palate cleanser. Biden has an uphill fight. He should take inspiration from The Temptations doing “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” live on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1969. Eddie Kendricks’ falsetto was the best:

The Sullivan Show aired on CBS from 1948-1971. For 23 years it aired a wide variety of popular culture.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 23, 2022

The Dems need to build Biden back better before the mid-terms if they expect an outcome that’s different than what the polls are currently showing.

The question is how to do it. One thing that won’t be happening is support from the mainstream media for the makeover. There’s been a blizzard of over-the-top headlines such as the NYT’s, “Biden Can Still Rescue His Presidency,” or Time’s “How the Biden Administration Lost Its Way” and Axios’s “Biden’s Epic Failures.”

These headlines could say: “Biden Fails to Fix All of the World’s Problems in a year.”

What’s driving much of this “presidency in peril” coverage is Biden’s approval ratings. Some results are truly discouraging, while CNN’s poll of polls, released Thursday, found that 41% of Americans approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job while 54% disapprove.

Still, Biden and the Dems need a mid-course correction. On to cartoons.

Can diplomacy solve the crisis in Ukraine?

The Senate failed to pass voting rights. Republicans wouldn’t help:

Republicans don’t want to look back one year, but they certainly don’t mind looking back at the 1950s:

The administration is sending rapid tests via the post office. Have they heard about Amazon?

Plenty of news this week about Trump and January 6. The dogs are gathering:

Saturday Soother – Biden’s First Year, January 22, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Winter sunrise, Monument Valley, Four Corners – January 2022 photo by Lothar Gold

Wrongo is rooting for Biden and for the Democrats to grab victory from the jaws of defeat in the November 2022 mid-terms. He also has a few thoughts about Biden’s first year as president. Dickens said it best in The Tale of Two Cities in 1859:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”

This seems to apply today. The best is how the economy is performing. GDP is up while unemployment is down dramatically. Six million new jobs have been created. Wrongo repeats what he said earlier this week:

“A year ago, forecasters expected unemployment to be nearly 6% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Instead, it fell to 3.9% in December….Wages are high, new businesses are forming at record rates, and poverty has fallen below its prepandemic levels. Since March 2020, Americans have saved at least $2 trillion more than expected…the median household’s checking account balance was 50% higher in July 2021 than before the pandemic.”

On Biden’s watch, we’ve given 532 million doses of Covid vaccine to Americans.

The worst of times includes too little progress in four areas: First, our inability to put the Coronavirus pandemic behind us. Second, our inability to do anything about the looming threats to our elections that partisan vote-counting in many Republican-controlled states implies. Third, the continuing fracturing of our social cohesion, and fourth, our inability to face up to the climate crisis.

These are not solely Biden’s failures. These failures are shared by Republicans, along with the rest of the Democratic Party leadership who seem to have forgotten what the job of being a politician is. If you doubt that, consider what Paul Begala said on MSNBC:

“…the problem for the Democrats…is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers”,

Begala is Dem royalty from an earlier time, even if he’s no longer powerful today. Doesn’t this show that the rot is throughout their leadership? Matt Taibbi wrote: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Democrats are now in their second straight year of losing significant ground with all minority groups. There are major defections among Asian and Hispanic voters, and even Trump’s six-point gain among black men last year is beginning to look like a thing (Biden’s approval rating with black voters has dropped from 78% to 57%).”

So, does all that add up to the age of foolishness or the season of darkness? Opinions differ. More from Taibbi, who says given America’s demographics, Dems had a glidepath to a permanent majority:

“If Democrats had just figured a way to deliver a few things for ordinary people over the years, they would never have lost again….if that were its real goal, the formula was obvious. Single-payer health care, bulk negotiation of drug prices, antitrust action against Too Big To Fail banks or Silicon Valley’s surveillance monopolists — really anything that demonstrates a willingness to prioritize voters over the takeover artists and CEOs who fund the party would have given them enduring credibility.”

With nine months until the 2022 mid-terms, what can ol’ Joe and the even older Democratic Party leadership do to turn things around? The truth is that they’re most likely incapable of turning the tanker that is the Democratic Party onto a new, true course that will return them to majorities in the House and Senate.

Wrongo has covered what they should do. He has little optimism that they are up to the task.

Time to pivot to our Saturday Soother, where we let go of questions like “Will Russia invade Ukraine?” or “Will Ivanka testify?” and focus on a weekend of professional football playoffs or the Australian Tennis Open. Here, we’re gonna watch the TV return of “Billions”. We’re also taking down the last of our Christmas decorations and hoping for the return to normalcy that Biden promised us a year ago.

Time to grab a seat by the window and listen to Gregorio Allegri’s “Miserere mei, Deus” (Have mercy on me, O God), performed in 2018 by the Tenebrae Choir conducted by Nigel Short at St. Bartholomew the Great Church, London. We all need a little mercy now, and this is beautiful:

This was composed in the 1630s for use on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday of Holy Week. Pope Urban VIII loved the piece and forbade its performance anywhere outside of the Sistine Chapel.

For over 100 years, ‘Miserere mei, Deus” was performed exclusively there. In 1770, Mozart who was 14, heard it, and transcribed it from memory. The following year, Mozart gave the sheet music to historian and biographer, Dr. Charles Burney. Burney published it in London, which resulted in the papacy lifting the ban.

Democrats Must Go on Offense

The Daily Escape:

Oregon City Bridge, OR with Willamette Falls in background – January 2022 photo by Sanman Photography

Gallup says that the Dems are losing the battle for hearts and minds. Their most recent poll shows a dramatic shift over the course of 2021, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter to a five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter. Here’s a chart showing the bad news:

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 16, 2022

A new Quinnipiac University Poll, conducted between January 7 – 10 of a nationwide sample of 1,313 adults shows that Americans are confused about which Party is protecting voting rights:

(hat tip: Jobsanger)

This is another example of poor messaging by Democrats. Republicans have been trying to suppress voting in many states, and the Republicans in Congress have prevented Democrats from passing legislation to protect the right to vote for all citizens. But only 45% say Democrats are protecting the right to vote and 43% say it’s the Republicans. That’s within the poll’s margin of error of 2.7%, meaning it’s a virtual tie.

There are only three cohorts with more than 50% saying that one Party is better. Women (52%) and Blacks (86%) say it’s the Democrats, while Whites (51%) say it’s the Republicans. It’s also interesting that 12% apparently have no opinion about which Party is better for voting rights. Whatever the reason why this poll is so close, it isn’t good for the country. On to cartoons.

Let’s vote our way out:

More GOP inflation:

Sen. Sinema is just not that into him

Are Sen. Manchin’s priorities misplaced?

Supremes reject federal government’s right to set rules for public safety:

(The mandate would have covered about 84.2 million Americans. OSHA estimated (before Omicron) that the rule would save 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations over a six-month period.)

Supremes can’t rule on Djokovic:

Saturday Soother – January 15, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Mount Pierce, with Mt. Washington in background, NH – photo by Eric Duma

On Tuesday, Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick won an election to fill the seat in Florida’s vacant 20th Congressional District. She will replace the late Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D) who died last April after losing his fight with pancreatic cancer.

Cherfilus-McCormick, a 42-year old health-care company CEO, easily defeated Republican nominee Jason Mariner. The WaPo reports that Mariner had talked openly during the campaign about his past convictions for theft and cocaine possession and his time in jail. Bless his heart!

It wasn’t expected to be a competitive contest since Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in the district. Biden won Florida’s 20th in 2020 with 77% of the vote, while Cherfilus-McCormick won the special election with 79%.

The CBS affiliate in Miami reports that Mariner is now refusing to concede his 60-point loss and is demanding an investigation into “election fraud”:

“Now they called the race, I did not win, so they say, but that does not mean…that we lost,”

He had filed a lawsuit before the polls even closed alleging there were problems with the ballots in Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

While we know that winning candidates can take office even without a concession, Republicans are turning into the Party of sore losers. When the 2022 mid-terms roll around, it is abundantly clear that few Republicans will concede in their races.

This makes a lie of what some Democrats (and a few Republicans) have said about the looming problems with vote counting; that if the winning margins are big enough, elections can’t be stolen. Margins are rarely as large as Cherfilus-McCormick’s, and her opponent isn’t conceding.

The entire point of the GOP’s continuing election lies is to undermine the legitimacy of wins by Democratic candidates. We’ll soon see whether contested mid-term elections won by Democrats will be judged as fraudulent in the many Republican-controlled states.

The broader Republican Party understands that there’s no such thing as a bad Conservative. Until they aren’t. At which point they call them liberals. As Rick Perlstein famously observed, in Conservative circles, “Conservatism never fails. It is only failed.”

When Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick takes office, Democrats will again hold 10 more House seats than Republicans. There is currently one vacancy in the House, the empty California seat formerly held by Congressman Devin Nunes (R).

Let’s move on from this week’s sad news that we will not see Democrats break the filibuster to pass either the For the People Act or the somewhat more modest Freedom to Vote Act. it’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Here in the Northeast, we’re expecting snow on Martin Luther King Jr. day, although we still have a respectable amount of snow on the Fields of Wrong. Today we’re hosting another gathering of family who were unable to visit when Wrongo inconveniently got Covid on Christmas Eve.

So the time is right to have a Saturday Soother before the house fills up. Let’s start by brewing up a vente cup of Panama Washed Process Gesha ($50/6 oz. That tells you inflation is really out of control!) from Jersey City, NJ’s own Modcup roasters.

Now grab a seat by the fireplace and remember Ronnie Spector, who died this week. Spector and the Ronettes were (along with the Shirelles) the essential 1960s girl groups. In 1963, the Ronettes joined forces with Wall of Sound producer, the odious Phil Spector, by cold-calling him.

The Ronettes went on to have nine top-ten hits working with Spector. Ronnie and Phil married in 1968. During the marriage, Spector was violent and abusive, subjecting her to physical and emotional threats, and locking her up in their home. She finally managed to escape, barefoot and with just the clothes on her back.

Now, listen to a 1987 cover of the Ronette’s original “Be My Baby” this time featuring Ronnie Spector alongside The E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons, with backing vocals by Belinda Carlisle, originally of the Go-Go’s, and Grace Slick from the Jefferson Airplane. The song was written by Ellie Greenwich, and was a genuine teen anthem in 1963, it was recorded live at The Latin Quarter, NYC, in February, 1987:

RIP Ronnie!

Why Isn’t Good Economic News Covered?

The Daily Escape:

Crater Lake, OR – winter 2020 photo by Austin James Jackson photography.

We need to talk about the economy. The underlying economic news is very good, but both the press and the Republicans say it’s bad, while Democrats say very little.

There are three things being discussed. First, inflation is terrible. This is a key Republican talking point about how Biden is failing the country. Second, jobs are going begging in what journalists have dubbed “The Great Resignation”. This is supposedly the fault of giving too much in unemployment benefits, allowing people to stay home rather than work. Third, if the economy is so great, why isn’t employment growing faster?

Starting with the last point, take a look at this graph showing jobs growth since 2008. The blue bars are when a Democrat was president, and the red bars are when a Republican was president:

That last blue bar is the strongest jobs growth in history. During 2021, the US created more than 6 million jobs, the most since records began in 1939.

That means Biden has just managed a year of stunning jobs growth, but consumers were constantly fed headlines about “disappointing” jobs reports, because the initial reports rarely align with skewed “expectations” by economists and pundits. Explaining this should be fairly easy, but the press can’t seem to get it across to the American people.

In addition, wages have been moving up across the board:

In December, average hourly earnings for Production and Non-supervisory Personnel rose $0.12 to $26.61, which is a 5.8% year over year gain. This shows that American workers are finally building some economic power. People have choices right now. After years of worker insecurity in the wake of the financial crisis followed by the pandemic, they have options. Jobs are going unfilled, while virtually no one is getting laid off.

The unemployment rate has now fallen close to a 50 year low, at a level exceeded only by one month in 2000, and during 2018-19. The economic result of this is visible on the graph above.

While employment is continuing to be strong, we’re still lagging in terms of filling job openings created by pandemic losses. America must gain an additional 3.6 million jobs in order to equal the number of employees in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. At the current average jobs growth rate for the past 6 months, that should take about 7 more months to reach the pre-pandemic employment level.

Economists are tying themselves in knots trying to figure out why more Americans aren’t going back to work. Some of those reasons are understandable: Fears about health, caring for someone who’s sick, and lack of childcare. But there’s a big reason that isn’t talked about. Employment has declined in the last year among workers who were 55 or older at the start of the pandemic. A WaPo analysis found that over 1.5 million more people were retired in November 2021 than would have been expected based on pre-pandemic trends. That would help explain the employment story if the mainstream media would look at the big picture instead of dutifully following Right-wing propaganda.

Turning to inflation, the WaPo says:

“The US economic recovery from the Covid pandemic was the strongest of any of the big Western economies…The Biden stimulus pushed the bank accounts of even the lowest-income Americans to unexpected heights. On average, they had more than twice as much in their savings accounts as they did when the pandemic began.

The Federal Reserve…helped, too. It held rates near zero and pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. The twin fire hoses of cash — one from Congress, one from the Fed — sent Americans’ spending roaring back.”

Bloomberg reports that manufacturing companies are saying their supply chains are performing a little better. Their message seems to be that things aren’t worsening.

While oil prices get the most attention, the ISM surveys show manufacturers say the cost of more commodities are falling. In December, there were eight commodities that were identified as falling in price. In November, it was four. In October, just one (wood).

Finally, the NY Fed is out with its 2022 inflation expectations survey. It shows that In December, US consumers expected inflation to average 6.0% over the next 12 months and 4.0% over the next three years. Those expectations were unchanged from November 2021.

It also showed that Respondents were more optimistic about their future wage and income growth, as well as their ability to hold a job or find a new one.

One big question for Republicans is what will they pivot to if inflation actually slows down?

A larger question is why the Democrats and the press can’t explain good news when it happens?

Saving The Republic By Destroying It

The Daily Escape:

New Year’s Day, Pike National Forest, near Colorado Springs, CO – January 2022 photo by Daniel Forster

“It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.” – Tom Stoppard

Tomorrow we will observe the anniversary of the attempted coup at the US Capitol. For the most part, in response, America will do nothing. The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman wrote last month,

“Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.”

There are tens of millions of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was magically stolen from Trump, and tens of millions who believe violence is the answer to resolving that problem. A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that 64% of Americans believe US democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.”

The poll found one-third of Trump voters say the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by opponents of Donald Trump, including Antifa and government agents, a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted by conservative media ever since the attack, even though it has been debunked.

Is the US careening toward a second civil war? Republicans seem to be willing to destroy the Republic to save it.

Stephen Marche published an excerpt from his new book in the Guardian. He points out that the Right has recognized that the American political system is in collapse, and it has a plan: violence and solidarity with far-right factions that want to subvert the vote-counting process.

Marche says that two things are happening at the same time. The American Right has abandoned its faith in government. The American Left has been slower on the uptake, but they are starting to figure out that the American political system which we call a democracy is less deserving of the name as each year passes.

So, the Right is already preparing for a breakdown of law and order. They’re preparing because they’re the ones fomenting the breakdown.

A University of Virginia analysis of census projections shows that by 2040, 30% of the population will control 68% of the Senate, and eight states will contain half of the US population.

The conservative project to achieve permanent minority rule long precedes Trump’s efforts to nullify the election in 2020. It’s being further codified into law in states across the country. The Senate’s built-in malapportionment gives advantages overwhelmingly to white, non-college educated voters. The federal system as constituted no longer represents the will of the majority of the American people.

This shouldn’t surprise you, since we continually elect people uncommitted to making government work. And surprise, it doesn’t. VOX’s Zach Beauchamp observes:

“America’s dysfunction stems, in large part, from an outdated political system that creates incentives for intense partisan conflict and legislative gridlock. That system may well be near the point of collapse. Reform is certainly a possibility. But the most meaningful changes to our system have been won only after bloodshed and struggle, on the fields of Gettysburg and in the streets of Birmingham. It is possible, maybe even likely, that America will not be able to veer from its dangerous path absent more eruptions and upheavals — that things will get worse before they get better.”

Can this be avoided? Unclear. The Democrats have done an excellent job in ensuring they have little bench strength. Who do they have who is capable of succeeding Biden?

The Republicans have lobotomized their talent base. Trump created an environment where any number of lunatics can claim followers that vaguely fit under the Republican banner, while the mainstream Right fails to control either the Party or its narrative.

It’s still possible for America to implement a modern electoral system, restore the legitimacy of the courts, reform its police forces, and alter its tax code to address inequality. All of these changes are possible.

However, we can’t simply hope that everything will work out; it won’t. If democracy is to survive, the US must start over. It must rediscover its revolutionary spirit. But who’s willing to do that? We seem to feel that it’s futile to expect that we can change anything.

The upshot is that people are angry. Many are checking out, no longer caring about what happens. How will we save the American project if we aren’t willing to fight for it?

What happens if it no longer matters who is running for president next time around?

We may find out.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Politics

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 13, 2022

Should the Mainstream Media Stay Neutral?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 23, 2022

Saturday Soother – January 15, 2022

Why Isn’t Good Economic News Covered?