Seriously, Though

Ok, so I know it won't actually be that bad.  But the chances of Trump winning are at least 50-50 and maybe more.  So what will a second Trump term by like?

Procedurally, Trump scares the hell out of me.  Substantively, I have no doubt that some of the things he wants to do will be really bad.  On the other hand, their badness may ultimately be what undercuts his popularity and thwarts his bid for dictatorial power.  But the human suffering will be very real, and the damage to our society will not be easily reversed.

Donald Trump will go after the "deep state."  The Heritage Foundation already has a plan to make some 50,000 civil service positions appointable by the President.  (The current number is 4,000).  Note that this does not mean replacing air traffic controllers, smoke jumpers, mail carriers, VA medical providers or other popular federal employees, who number some 2.2 million.  But it refers to mid-level policy makers.  Backers of the plan argue that the federal bureaucracy is a rogue branch, unresponsive to the President, that needs to be brought into line.  They are not intimidated by fears that a Democratic President might do the same thing.  So far as they are concerned, Democrats have run the federal bureaucracy since the New Deal and Republicans just want their turn.  They may underestimate the value of a permanent bureaucracy in maintaining some degree of continuity and avoiding wild, destabilizing  swings in policy.  They may also underestimate the role of an unelected bureaucracy in maintaining the rule of law (hence the quote above), and the extent to which resistance is based on law as well as inertia. Nor does anyone know whether replacing so many mid-level managers at once will make the federal bureaucracy more responsive, make it a praetorian guard, or just make it wildly dysfunctional.

Scarier still are plans to do much the same with the military. And even scarier is the thought that, given the necessarily hierarchical, top-down nature of the military, appointing a few loyalists at the top could allow them give promotions to ideological allies and remake the entire mid-level military bureaucracy into a right-wing preserve, unlikely to accept civilian control from a Democrat.  And then there are his plans to militarize law enforcement by sending the National Guard into Democratic-led cities. Do not expect his worst high level appointments to be thwarted by the need for Senate confirmation.  By the end of his term, Trump had learned to circumvent that requirement by appointing "acting" officials.  

I am less concerned about Trump using the Department of Justice to charge his political opponents, which appears to be his top priority.  I am confident that our institutions are strong enough that even a Trump DOJ will have to allege violations of some specific law, which will be a heavy lift.  They will also come up against an independent judiciary which will throw out the most obviously spurious charges, and juries that will acquit.  Trump will no doubt successfully block any investigation of his own corrupt behavior.

All of this is scary.  Both scarier and less scary is Trump's substantive agenda -- very bad, but some of it so unpopular that it just might be his undoing.

For instance, there has been talk of a Trump Administration using the CDC to track and surveille abortion, or enforcing Comstock Laws that remain on the books to forbid interstate shipment of any medications or equipment used for abortion.  In fact, this will be an interesting test of just how much influence the party ideological leaders have on Trump.  Although he has adopted some degree of pro-life talk, there is no reason to believe that Trump has any strong principled opposition to abortion.  (Or any other principles, for that matter).  He also appears to recognize just how unpopular such a measure would be.  My guess is that Trump will limit himself to a few anti-abortion remarks and generally avoid doing anything as much as possible.

Rather more interesting are some of the things Trump clearly intends to do.  One is to impose a 10% tax on all imports. That will have to be passed by Congress, of course and will, again, be an interesting measure of how much sway Trump has with a party whose dogma is that taxes must never be increased under any circumstances.  Maybe a Republican Congress will agree to an imports tax increase if offset by a income tax reduction.  And maybe breaking the Republican Party's most absolute taboo could have some good effect in the long run.  In the short run, if such a plan passes the most obvious effect will be an increase in prices.  Nothing close to a 10% increase, to be clear.  The tax will only be on the minority of products that we import.  And it can (and is intended to be) offset to some degree by substituting taxed imports with American products that are more expensive but for the tax.  On the other hand, some of the price increase will filter up as imports are used in American-made products.  And no doubt other countries will retaliate by slapping a tax on US products, thus hurting our exports. It seems like a strange measure for someone who is proclaiming inflation during the Biden Administration and an unprecedented catastrophe.  But I am guessing that the party faithful will scarcely even notice and associated increase in prices, much less care.  The rest of the population will see it as an inconvenience, but hardly a catastrophe.

Immigration is a different matter.  Yes, on the one hand, Republican leaders who proclaim their opposition to immigration usually preface it with the qualifier "illegal."  On the other hand Trump notoriously declared his opposition to immigration from "shithole countries" and many of his supporters accept "replacement theory."  This being the case, I would expect Trump to make a serious attempt at crackdown on immigration in general and not just the illegal variety.  This will not go over well with big money interests who depend on immigrant labor (legal or illegal).  It could be an interesting contest between the Republican base and Republican donors. And given how much Trump has emphasized it, and his continued association with the odious Stephen Miller, I fully expect Trump to make a serious crackdown on longtime US residents who are in the country illegally, including widespread workplace raids and makeshift detention facilities.  

I would expect this to be highly disruptive and unpopular in farm communities that depend on immigrant labor.  These farm communities are, after all, major Trump strongholds.  As such, massive immigration raids might actually dent his popularity with an important constituency.  On the other hand, I also expect that these farm communities will make up a relatively small part of the Republican base, so it may not dent Trump's popularity with the party faithful all that much.  Needless to say, it will cause great outcry in the agriculture and construction industries and be unpopular with the big money interests.  Once again, this will be an interesting test of big money interests' ability to reign Trump in.  I would expect the effect on the wider public to mostly take the form of increased food and construction costs.  Again, given the outrage at Biden over food and housing price increases, one would expect these to hurt Trump.  But again, I would expect the party faithful either not to notice, or not to connect the price increases with Trump's policies.

And, finally, Trump is once again promising to repeal and replace Obamacare. The last attempt to do so should have proven to everyone's satisfaction that Republicans don't know how to make healthcare policy and don't much care.  What they ended up with was a repeal now, replace later.  In practical terms, what that would have meant was shutting down the exchanges, withdrawing everyone's subsidies, and kicking millions off of Medicaid.  And it came within one vote of passing.  Fortunately, a dying McCain, in his last public act, stepped in to save his party from itself.  I don't know if Donald Trump, if elected, will once again, attack Obamacare. There is no appetite for such a move, either by the base or the party leadership. This is purely a personal grudge match on Trump's part.  I have no doubt that any attempt to repeal Obamacare would, in the words of one party leader, make as much sense as diving headfirst into a wood chipper. It would mean throwing some ten million people off Medicaid and another ten million off the exchanges.  Trump would clearly and unequivocally be blamed for it.  In short, it would, well, make as much sense as diving headfirst into a wood chipper.  So I suppose the question will be first, whether Trump has the attention span to pursue this, and second, how far his party can go in saving him from himself.

The Latest Trump Tantrum is Just Like Any Other

 

So, the New Hampshire primary is over.  Trump won by a comfortable margin, but less than polls suggested. Nikki Haley is refusing to drop out, and is actually getting pretty hard-hitting.  And Trump is throwing a tantrum, because of course he is.

By all means, feel free to relish the spectacle. But don't read too much into it.  We've seen this script any number of times and should know already what will come of it, which is not much.

The Republican leadership can forgive anything in Trump, including shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, but the one thing that really bothers them is when he breaks the Eleventh Commandment -- Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans.  Republican leaders are sure that is the one unforgiveable sin.  They freaked out when he said nasty things about Ron DeSantis and Kim Reynolds (governor of Iowa).  They were sure he had finally shown himself up for what he was and that the voters would finally turn against him.  And then they discovered that the Republican rank and file love when Trump violates the Eleventh Commandment because they seem him as attacking the evil Republican Establishment and standing up for the little guy.  And really, the Republican Establishment should have known what to expect when Trump attacked DeSantis and Reynolds.  Exactly the same thing happened in 2016 when he attacked Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

And now it is Nikki Haley's turn.  She didn't actually win an election against Trump, but she did better than expected and is now following up by telling hitherto unspeakable truths about Trump.  Of course, that is what DeSantis did too, just before it became his cause was hopeless and he came crawling back.  Make no mistake, Nikki Haley will do exactly the same thing.  

The New Hampshire primary is an anomaly.  New Hampshire is one of the last holdouts of the old-style New England moderate Republican.  It also allows non-Republicans to vote in the primaries.  All of which means that Haley's respectable showing will not be duplicated.  Next up are the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina primary.  The most ideological hardline voters dominate caucuses.  And South Caroline is hardcore Southern Trump country.  I have no doubt that Trump will get the kind of wins there that he thinks are his due.  Haley will drop out and come crawling back, just like all the others have. They will kiss and make up.

What about all those Haley supporters in the primary who say they will never vote for Trump, or that they will vote against him if he is convicted.  I expect them to go the way of other Never Trumpers -- it will turn out that they mean Never Trump in the primaries.  Faced with the unspeakable prospect of a Democrat in the White House, I have no doubt they will fall in line.

So enjoy the spectacle while you can.  But don't expect anything to come of it.

The 2024 Election -- My Worst Fears

And now to a slightly less depressing topic -- Donald Trump is not only cruising to an easy victory in the primaries, but seems poised to win the general election as well.  No amount of deranged behavior on his part seems to dent his chances.  The real danger he poses to democracy is finally becoming a story, but Trumpers like that, anti-anti-Trumpers dismiss it as hysteria, and the persuadable public sees the whole thing as too abstract to matter.  Young people are fleeing Biden over the Gaza war and minorities seem to like Trump's vulgar racism.  It is depressing.  My angry, warped imagination imagines the election playing out something like this:

January:  Donald Trump announces his intent to deal with Joe and Hunter Biden with two bullets to the head on inauguration day.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers say Biden named an acting director of the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration to evade Senate confirmation, so really, what is the difference.  Trump sweeps Iowa and New Hampshire.  Polls show him two points ahead in national and swing state voting.

February.  Trump announces his intent to arrest all Democratic leaders in Congress and ship them off to Guantanamo.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers explain that concerns are overblown and besides, the federal bureaucracy will stop him.  He sweeps Nevada, South Carolina and Michigan.  Polls show him four points ahead in national and swing state voting.

March.  Trump trial begins, showing hitherto undisclosed details of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.  He vows to do the same if he loses this time. Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers dismiss the 2020 election as ancient history and ask why people are obsessing on it.  Trump sweeps Super Tuesday and secures the nomination.  Polls show in six points ahead in national and swing state votes.

April.  Trump vows if elected to reinstate the Muslim ban, strip all American Muslims of their citizenship, and deport them.  Crowds applaud.  Muslims vow anyone but Biden.  Polls show Trump ahead of Biden among Muslim voters.

May.  Trump convicted for his role in the 2020 election but allowed to remain free on bond pending his appeal.  He vows to ship all judges, prosecutors, and witnesses involved off to Guantanamo.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers say not to worry, Congress would impeach him if he tried anything like that.  Polls show Trump ahead by eight points in national and swing state votes.

June.  Trump vows if elected to outlaw the "Democrat party" and establish a one-party state.  He will require all news media to tow the Republican line and make it an affirmative defense to all crimes that they were done on behalf of the Republican Party.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers dismiss all concern over these remarks as hysteria and is it any different than Biden's proposal to cancel student loans.  Polls show Trump ahead by ten points in national and swing state votes.

July.  The Republican convention.  Surrounded by Confederate imagery, Trump names David Duke as his vice presidential nominee, saying that now he is impeachment proof.  He vows to repeal the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers say the Confederate imagery is not a great look, but Trump is right to roll back federal tyranny and return power to the states.  Polls show nearly a third of Black voters back Trump.

August. Trump announces plans to turn the Proud Boys into his private praetorian guard, tasked to do anything he says with no constraints.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers laugh at the whole idea that the Proud boys could be any serious threat and say the real danger to freedom is IRS audits and environmental regulations.  Polls show Trump ahead by 15 points in national and swing state votes.

September.  Trump shoots someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.  Supporters say how glad they are that we finally have a politician who takes the Second Amendment seriously and any elitist who hangs out on Fifth Avenue deserves to die.  Anti-anti Trumpers say it is not a great look, but still it was only one person out of a population of 300 million and we have to consider what he will accomplish.  Polls show Trump's lead widening to nearly 20 points.

October.  Trump announces that he will name Joe Arpaio as Secretary of Homeland Security and have ICE stop anyone who looks too Hispanic and make them prove citizenship or be arrested and deported on the spot.  Crowds applaud.  Anti-anti Trumpers say we need to get tough on the border.  Polls show Trump has nearly two-thirds of the Hispanic vote.

November.  In the days leading up to the election, Trump stands in front of a giant poster of Adolph Hitler and leads crowds in Nazi uniforms in changes of "Sieg Heil!"  Supporters are thrilled.  Anit-anti Trumpers say isn't it clever how Trump knows how to troll the liberals.  Trump goes no to win the general election by nearly a 2-1 margin.

 OK, so it wont' be that bad, I know.  But it really is frustrating that nothing seems to dent his lead.

PS:  Of course, how could I have forgotten?  Somewhere along the line Trump will pledge never to leave office regardless of his term.

Gaza and Genocide

 

So South Africa has  charged genocide against Israel's war in Gaza and Israel maintains it has followed the laws of war.  Where would I weigh in?  I am inclined to agree with Kevin Drum, who says that Israel has committed war crimes, but they do not rise to the level of genocide.

Or rather, I agree, up to a point.  Israel has committed war crimes, but they do not rise to the level of genocide -- yet. Estimated dead are about 1% of the Gaza population.  Drum points out that this is all too common in major wars.  But I would add a proviso there.  Wars that kill 1% of the population are all too common.  Wars that kill 1% of the population in 100 days are a different matter.  And if this war continues for all of 2024, as Israeli leaders say they intend, then the killing could be a whole lot worse.  The Gaza war differs from any other war in memory in its geography.  A land only 25 miles long and 7 miles wide, with its borders walled in leaves no room to flee.  

Furthermore, with borders sealed off, only a trickle of aid is entering, via Egypt.  A quarter of the population is at risk for starvation.  And now Netanyahu is demanding closure of the border crossing to Egypt as a condition for ending the war.  How is one to interpret that other than a call to starve the entire population?  Netanyahu has also refused to allow displaced Gazans back into the north, saying that the area is still a war zone and not safe.  Of course, the entire strip is a war zone and not safe.  In the north, Israelis are at least claiming they can reduce the intensity of fighting.

Looking back on the earlier days of the war, many of our concerns seem almost quaint.  There was pressure for Israel not to shut off water and electricity.  Is there even a water or electric system left?  There were calls for Israel to let in fuel for desalination plants, hospitals, and bakeries.  Are there any desalination plants, hospitals or bakeries left?  Once we anxiously followed premature babies being evacuated from hospitals.  Now the only question is whether there are any functioning hospitals.

I don't know what the US is doing right now, but to my mind our focus should be simple.  We should be pressuring Israel to open up its own entries into Gaza and allow in aid -- food, water, medicine, tents, winter clothes and blankets, fuel, generators, etc etc in mass quantities.  There are no excuses.  Starvation is at hand.  It must be stopped.

Some Thoughts on the Gaza War

Part of what inspired that was confirmation by mainstream sources of rumor that Israel was starting to send reservists home, but with the prospect of being called up again.  

I have been relying from the start on a mainstream opinion from the start of the war that Israel can only sustain ground operations at their current intensity for about three months. The reason for that is that Israel has mobilized so many reserves that everything else has largely been placed on hold -- not something that can be sustained for long.  That was why I was skeptical of another item in the rumor -- that the reserves would be called back into service to fight Hezbollah.  That seemed like sheer madness.  Hamas has been tough enough.  Hezbollah is a whole lot stronger.

Assuming that what is actually happening is that the ground war is moving into a less intense phase, with reserves rotating in and out, what would I say about that?  It is potentially encouraging -- but only potentially.  Israel can only sustain this level of intensity in the ground war for so long.  But there is no real limit on how long they can keep flattening Gaza into a parking lot.  And if you thing Netanyahu wouldn't resort to such a measure -- well, think again.  And that is to say nothing of starvation and disease.  Scaling back the war is not enough.  We need to scale up relief supplies.

I asked before what options Israel realistically had, and maybe it is time to start answering my own question.

So first and foremost, to anyone who says "From river to sea," it is not a realistic option for Israel to respond to a vicious attack by suddenly coming to the realization that it has no right to exist, disbanding itself, and relocating all 9 million inhabitants somewhere else.  Even if you thing that is what Israel should do, it is wholly unrealistic to expect.

Others may say that that is not what they mean by "river to sea," they just want Israel to tear down the wall and allow free ingress and egress.  Well, apparently this is a difficult concept for some people, but when people confined behind a wall break out and go on a mad rampage of gunning people down at a concert, rape, throwing grenades into shelters where people hide, burning people alive, etc., that is most unlikely to make people want to tear down the wall and allow free ingress and egress.  

Then there are people who say yes, Israel was justified in going to war, but only against Hamas, not against the larger population.  Except that when Hamas intertwines itself with the general population, builds headquarters in schools and hospitals, and goes out of its way to maximize civilian casualties to stoke outrage against Israel, saying to go to war with Hamas only is not only unrealistic, it is simply not possible.  It amounts to telling Israel to shrug off the attack because any counter attack would harm the wider population, which is also not realistic.

At the same time, I am not one of those people who excuses Israel's worst destruction by saying it was all Hamas's fault for hiding behind civilians, so Israel has no further obligations and Palestinians should be grateful for any step, however minor, to limit civilian casualties.

So what do I suggest?

Limit the war to one part of the strip at a time.  If you say that an area is a safe haven, treat it as a safe haven. If there is target in an otherwise safe haven that absolutely has to be hit, modern warfare has low-yield, extremely accurate drones and missiles.  No, they are not perfect, but they should certainly be able to do a better job than Israel has done so far.

Give more warning before an attack (either bombing or urban warfare) and more opportunities to leave.  The six hour humanitarian pauses were a good first step.  Do more.  By my understanding, most of the population of Mosul was able to flee before the final battle.  Take that as a model.  Yes, I recognize this gives Hamas fighters the chance to slip disguised among the general population.  I have no objection to detaining fighting age men to determine if they are Hamas.  

Hamas made their military headquarters in hospitals.  By the laws of war, it is permitted to attack the hospitals -- but only after giving patients and staff the chance to evacuate.  That means providing the means to evacuate, including for people too frail to flee on their own.  Medivac helicopters come to mind.  If that is not possible, at least ambulances with life support systems.  Same provision about temporarily detaining suspect Hamas fighters.

And send in a lot more relief supplies.  Gaza has three openings, one through Egypt and the other two through Israel.  I see no reason whatever why relief supplies can't enter through Israel.  That should have been allowed from the start, and certainly now.  Overseas relief is an option.  If Gaza lacks facilities for large-scale shipments, then do it on a smaller scale.  Allow humanitarian pauses for relief to get in.  And relief is going to have to mean more than food, fuel and medical supplies.  It is the middle of winter.  There will have to be tents, blankets, winter clothes, etc.

There was no excuse for delay before.  There is no excuse not to change course now.  I certainly look forward to seeing ground operations scaled down, as they inevitably must be.  But it does little good unless aerial bombardment also scales back and more relief supplies come in.

How to Follow Events and Stay Sane

 

After following the wars in Ukraine and Gaza with great anxiety, I have found at least one piece of advice on how to follow such events and stay sane. 

It is a rather square piece of advice that will no doubt be unpopular, but it really is best to follow CNN, AP, or some other mainstream outlet.

In response to howls of protest, let me explain.  When you follow non-mainstream sources, there will be a huge profusion of rumors and speculation.  Some rumors will raise fears; others will raise hopes.  Editorials will have wildly divergent interpretations of the events and mutually contradictory projections about what is going to happen.  Some of these rumors will pan out.  Others will not.  

In Ukraine, for instance, I recall panicked accounts of planes leaving Moscow for remote areas in Siberia.  Further investigation revealed that the planes almost immediately turned around and went home, and that nuclear drills of this kind are actually routine.  A report of explosions over Belarus gave rise to fears that it might join the war.  They were sonic booms.  One thing at least I did not panic over were reports of bioweapons in Ukrainian hospitals, which some people took to mean the Russians were about to launch a biological attack. Actually, they had just found a useful propaganda weapon that caught on in the West. Gaza, in the meantime, has been rife with rumors of relief supplies from Cyprus, but nothing has come of it.

Mainstream sources, by contrast, do not usually report these rumors until they have been investigated and verified. This filtering process does delay mainstream sources from publishing rumors that turn out to be true.  But it also screens out a lot of rumors that turn out to be false (see above).  Memory being what it is, we tend to remember that rumors that mainstream sources delayed in publishing that turned out to be true and forget all the rumors that never panned out.  This can create the illusion that non-mainstream sources are more reliable, but it is an illusion.  

Chasing unverified rumors is also extraordinarily stressful because such rumors often invoke groundless fears or feed false hopes.  Reality is quite bad enough without this baseless speculation.  At the height of my fears that the Ukrainian war would lead to nuclear war, I found it strangely comforting to read about what was actually happening, which was never quite as bad or as scary.  And remember C.S. Lewis, "[R]eal resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible."

The Error in "You Bumped Me So I Can Shoot You"

 

I must admit to being very fond of Patterico's post on what he calls the "You bumped me so I can shoot you" fallacy.  He describes it as follows:

Move #1: Take an opponent’s arguably provocative act and declare it to be intentionally evil; and

Move #2: Propose a wildly disproportionate response to that act, and justify it by pretending that the “provocation” and the wildly disproportionate response are equivalent. Describing both at the highest level of generality possible (“they are both acts of violence”) is an excellent aid in drawing such false equivalencies.

He goes on to say that "You bumped me so I can shoot you" makes up about 95% of Republican discourse these days.  I see only one flaw in his argument.  It assumes that the "you bumped me so I can shoot you" argument takes place after the bump but before the shooting.  For instance, Hillary Clinton was genuinely (and legitimately) investigated for mishandling of classified documents and (controversially) cleared, so Donald Trump should be immune from investigation, let alone prosecution.  Or the Biden Justice Department has indicted Trump, so the Trump Justice Department should retaliate by indicting Biden.  Leaders of the two parties should be treated exactly the same regardless of their actual actions.  If a Democrat bumps a Republican and escapes prosecution, it would be unfair to prosecute a Republican for shooting a Democrat.

Except that is not necessarily how it goes.  Often times, the argument begins after the shooting, at which point Republicans frantically scramble for some instance in which a Democrat bumped a Republican in order to call it even.  Or the say that the shooting was a completely justified retaliation for the bump.

For instance, Trump responded to a defeat in the 2020 election by filing or encouraging others to file over 60 lawsuits to overturn the election, asking state legislatures to overturn the election, asking Republican election officials not to certify the results, arranging the appointment of alternate slates of electors, calling on Congress and the Vice President to refuse to certify the results, inciting a riot to put pressure on Congress and the Vice President not to certify, and refused to call of the mob until it was already defeated.  But hey, Hillary Clinton called Trump illegitimate in an interview three years after the election so we're all even, right?  And besides Al Gore sued to halt the recount in Florida and Stacey Abrams delayed 10 days in conceding defeat and denied she was making a concession speech.  So clearly Trump was just engaged in politics as usual and just doing what Democrats do all the time.  Right?