On seeing Trump differently
I’ve already acknowledged that I see Trump differently now than I did in 2016, and I’ll now acknowledge that that change in perception has only been further solidified in the wake of his shooting. Part of this change means that I no longer think it’s useful or meaningful to call him a charlatan, to insist that he’s “faking it”, that he’s actually a really bad businessman who only pretends to be a successful one on TV, that he’s a common low-end huckster of bad steaks and worthless paraphernalia. All of this implies that there are other actors on the world stage who, by contrast, are the real deal, and unlike in 2016 I just don’t believe that’s the case anymore.
Justin Smith-Ruiu, World Spirit on Feedback
Think at least a little bit about the math
One of the problems with being a grievance party for minority interests is that minorities are a minority. If your vision of politics is that what is most important about us is our demographic characteristics—race, sex, education level, etc.—and you understand political life as, essentially, a zero-sum competition between rival groups, then you should probably think at least a little bit about the math, just in case people start to take you seriously. … Doubling down on minority positions is how you become a minority party—and stay one.
This is Ruy Teixeira’s revenge.
Teixeira was the co-author (with John Judis) of a very famous book called The Emerging Democratic Majority. The thesis of the book was that as the U.S. electorate became younger, less white, and more immigrant-heavy, Democrats would be able to assemble a durable electoral majority—provided they held on to the working-class voters who had been the keystone of the New Deal coalition.
(Teixeira, who has won very little love for himself telling Democrats things they do not want to hear, now hangs his hat at the American Enterprise Institute, which is not famously full of Democrats but is absolutely packed to the rafters with people who know how to count.)
Democrats forgot to do the second part of the Teixeira two-step and keep those working-class voters ….
Reactionary Biden
Mr Biden resharpened Mr Trump’s most effective political wedge by doing away with obstacles he had created to illegal immigration, providing no alternative. By the time he restored some of Mr Trump’s restrictions this spring, more than 4m migrants had crossed the southern border, compared with fewer than 1m under Mr Trump.
The Economist’s Lexington, Democrats need to understand: Americans think they’re worse
Little pitchers …
… have big ears.
Trump … is winning culturally in shaping America’s manners and mores.
It was such a cozy moment in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning, with the roaring fire and the warm handshake and the past presidents — including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and F.D.R. — looking down benignly on the scene.
So why did it feel so nauseating?
It is hard to watch Donald Trump be gracious, because he is gracious only when he wins, and that’s not a good lesson for the children of America. When he loses, he tries to burn the democracy down.
I will pray for America and its rulers, but I could not in good conscience tell a child to look up to 47 as an example of goodness or manliness.
They will do so anyway unless, perhaps, their parents tell them not to.
The Kakistocracy
When I first saw and article saying the new word to master was “kakistocracy,” I (incorrectly) confounded it with “kleptocracy.”
I reckon we’ll have both for four years. We’re certainly getting the kakistocracy. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is banana republic stuff. Hegeth, or whatever his name is, may be a decent human being, but there is no reason to think he can run any large organization, let alone our huge and euphemistically misnamed Department of War.
On the other hand, remember the morass our Best and Brightest got us into.
[H]istory is well and truly back. Even Francis Fukuyama agrees.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 