Jerome Powell and the Fed
I know, I know—as a conservative, I’m required to hate the unaccountable administrative state. But in this case, Jerome Powell’s unaccountability is the only thing making it safe-ish for him to call foul on the more sinister unaccountability of Trump’s gangster regime.
The institution that Powell leads has a special role in America’s international preeminence and therefore also arguably a special duty to resist when a Peronist president goes about trying to smash that preeminence on a rock. Divorcing monetary policy from national politics helped make the United States a safe haven for global investors, a place people could park their cash without needing to worry that some dummy in the White House would slash interest rates irresponsibly to goose hiring in an election year. In trying to undo that, Trump is now following in the footsteps of economic basket cases like Argentina, Turkey, Russia, Zimbabwe, and—ta da—Venezuela.
“One of the biggest hurdles for developing nations getting foreign investment is demonstrating they are stable, and their economies aren’t run on rampant, capricious corruption,” former Biden economic adviser Jesse Lee wrote last night after news of the criminal probe of Powell broke. “Trump weaponizing DOJ against the Fed Chair is the loudest possible signal we aren’t a place to invest.” Powell isn’t even the only Federal Reserve director facing trumped-up accusations (pun intended) from the administration, for cripes sake.
On ICE
Video as proxy war
We’re fighting over a shooting video as a proxy for the fight over whether ICE is doing normal law enforcement work or something more fascistic and extreme.
At the moment, regardless of your interpretation of the video evidence, I don’t think there’s a way to establish the normalcy of intense interior enforcement without some concessions to ICE’S nonradical critics. Concessions like agents’ no longer going masked in so many public situations. Or operations being slowed and training extended to encourage professionalism and cut down on harassment. Or allowing a full investigation of any agent-involved shooting before the White House or its agencies denounce the shooting victim.
The administration would presumably characterize some of these concessions as surrender. Longer training would not make the protests stop, unmasked ICE agents could indeed face more danger, and the most reckless protesters might be emboldened by any hint of retreat.
But if you are trying to build a stable immigration enforcement policy, you need backing from the conflicted middle of the country, even if that comes at some cost to your ideal approach.
Put on a tie!
Allow me to address the ladies and gentlemen at ICE in what apparently is their mother tongue: Take off the masks and put on a f—–g tie.
…
[W]e dress them up like the world’s most slovenly stormtroopers.
And then we are surprised when they act like the world’s most slovenly stormtroopers.
…
[T]here are a dozen ways for a professional law enforcement agent to deal with a vehicle blocking a public street, and none of them involves screaming obscenities at the driver or giving her contradictory orders. That the ICE agents on the scene do not seem to have been able to agree among themselves what should be done about the lurking menace of … an unarmed woman in a Honda who was poking fun at them … suggests very strongly a lack of credible command on the scene.
…
This isn’t one of those colorable disagreements—the story that Trump, Vance, Noem, et al. are trying to tell—that Good was a rioter and terrorist who was trying to run down ICE agents—is a lie. A dumb, easily disproved lie.
But Donald Trump has built a movement on dumb, easily disproved lies.
… It is worth keeping in mind that in the lead-up to the attempted coup d’état of January 2021, Trump’s people retailed even more ridiculous stories about Venezuelan hackers messing with U.S. election results. (Possibly in cahoots with the North Koreans or Bigfoot or Elvis.) Trump understands something about his base: They enjoy being lied to.
Artist unrelated to blogger
Precisely the point, n’est çe pas?
In essence, the rap on Churchill is that he was a 19th-century man parachuted into the 20th.
But is that not precisely to the point? It took a 19th-century man—traditional in habit, rational in thought, conservative in temper—to save the 20th century from itself. The story of the 20th century is a story of revolution wrought by thoroughly modern men: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and above all Lenin, who invented totalitarianism out of Marx’s cryptic and inchoate communism (and thus earns his place as runner-up to Churchill for Person of the Century).
And it is the story of the modern intellectual, from Ezra Pound to Jean-Paul Sartre, seduced by these modern men of politics and, grotesquely, serving them ….
Charles Krauthammer, Things that Matter
Bruni Sentences
- Also in The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells considered a riot of reflections on the military operation in Venezuela: “Key administration personalities have taken to network television and social media, offering their own post-facto theories of the case. They have been like the sweepers in curling, trying to coax a runaway stone onto an advantageous track.” (Maxwell Burke, Seattle, and Barbara Douglas, Manhattan)
- In The Washington Post, Chuck Culpepper saluted those who follow and love the Indiana University football team, which, after many decades of mediocrity, suddenly shot to glory: “They’re quite possibly the happiest fans anyone ever saw — steeped in amazement while still free of the poison of expectation.” (Joe Bellavance, Indianapolis)
- And in The Wall Street Journal, after Indiana walloped Alabama in the Rose Bowl, Jason Gay admitted: “I’ve given up trying to understand this Indiana turnaround. We’ve crossed the river from Cinderella to Whathehella.” (Bruce Newman, Santa Clara, Calif.)
Items from Frank Bruni’s “For Love of Sentences” (shared link). The first part of his post is very perceptive as well,
Shorts
- The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. (Hannah Arendt via @jonah on micro.blog)
- A devil is no less a devil if the lie he tells flatters you and stands to help you defeat your enemies and achieve power. (Rod Dreher, 2021)
- The news industry is Society’s appendix – permanently inflamed and completely pointless. You’re better off simply having it removed. (Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News)
- Trump Is Not Playing Five-Dimensional Chess in Venezuela. After a strong first move, he’s eating all the pieces. (Garry Kasparov)
- Richard Russell, the arch-segregationist senator …: The Civil Rights Act only passed, he groused, because “those damn preachers got the idea that it was a moral issue.” (Ross Douthat, Bad Religion)
- For all the administration’s screeching about swarthy immigrants, it ain’t Somalis in Minnesota who are making the federal government run like that of a “sh-thole country.” It’s Trump who’s to blame for that. (Nick Catoggio)
Elsewhere in Tipsyworld:
A devil is no less a devil if the lie he tells flatters you and stands to help you defeat your enemies and achieve power.
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 my favorite no-algorithm social medium.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 