Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Trump Era Page 7 of 13

The Only Person with Sense in the Trump Administration…

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On July 29, 2017

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Steve Bannon

…is Steve Bannon. (Yes, he’s a nasty nativist as well.)

In the last few days, Bannon has suggested increasing the top marginal rate to 44 percent and regulating Google and Facebook.

Both of these are good ideas. I’m sure that Bannon’s regulations of Facebook and Google might not be what I’d want, but the bottom line is that these are now the primary media organizations of the world: What people read or see is mostly determined by Google or Facebook–their algorithms and employees.

For example, three months ago, Google put out a new algo to reduce fake news. Result?

In the three months since Google implemented the changes to its search engine, fewer people have accessed left-wing and anti-war news sites. Based on information available on Alexa analytics, other sites that have experienced sharp drops in ranking include WikiLeaks, Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News and Truthout. Even prominent democratic rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International appear to have been hit.

Hey! What a surprise. Major corporation does something which makes people who tend to think badly of major corporations read less!

The bottom line is simple: Two companies control most of what people read and that should be under democratic control. And that’s before we even get to how Google and Facebook have systematically taken control of advertising, diverting more and more of the profit to them and away from actual content creators.

This is similar to the problem of railroads before major highways and trucking: farmers could only get crops to market through railroads, so railroads took almost all the profits. We have forgotten, but farmers hated the railroads with a sickly passion, and for good reason.

Google and Facebook determine who gets read, the political and economic repercussions of which are massive. (And Facebook’s CEO quite clearly wants to be President.)

Bannon is right, whether you like his other politics or not.

As far as the Trump admin goes, Ivanka and Jared are the ones who try to mitigate the nasty social stuff (often failing) and Bannon is the only one who wants ordinary Americans to do well.

You can despise all three, with good reason, but understand the reality.

Oh, and “fake news”? It exists, but the hysteria around it is being ridden heavily by people you want nothing to do with. And no fake news so far has ever equaled the New York Times lies which helped sell the Iraq war.

Fake news hysteria among elites is really just them saying: “Our monopoly on lies is being taken away from us! Only approved lies should be allowed!”

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Is Impeaching Trump a Good Idea?

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On June 13, 2017

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I’m really not sure it is.

Trump has been vastly incompetent at his job. He hasn’t appointed almost any administrative appointees, he’s embroiled in endless scandals, and he’s basically outsourcing policy to Rand Paul and various thinktanks.

Not that he isn’t doing bad things, but the main thing is that he’s very ineffective and he’s his own worst enemy.

(I am not in the least concerned that a man who hasn’t filled almost any DoD posts is going to launch a coup, so I don’t consider this fear a reason to impeach him.)

Now, there is an argument that he should be impeached simply because, well, he’s committed impeachable offenses. Starting, in my opinion, with the emoluments clause: He very clearly receives money from foreigners every day.

But in political terms, he’s ineffective, and there’s good reason to believe that Pence would be much less ineffective. Pence is a theocrat’s theocrat and will push a set of horrible policies. Plus, Pence doesn’t have foot in mouth disease. Pence will fill up all these administrative slots post-haste with a combination of Christian college graduates and the regular Republican apparatchniks, and he will have enough sense to perform basic tasks properly, like have lawyers check over administrative orders thoroughly.

In short, Pence will be much more effective at doing harm than Trump is.

I think, in terms of harm reduction, a badly wounded, unpopular Trump is far less dangerous than Pence.

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The Real Threat To Europe Is Neither America Nor Russia

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On May 29, 2017

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So, much hysteria over Donald Trump’s disdain for NATO and his dislike of Germany.

Angela Merkel said that Germany no longer has a reliable US partner.

Oh dear. Oh dear.

Let us lay out the simple facts:

..the EU’s population is 508 million. When the UK leaves, it will be 447 million.

Russia’s population is 143 million.

Minus Britain, the EU has a GDP of 18.1 trillion (purchasing power parity), Russia has an economy of 3.5 trillion (ppp). Germany alone has a GDP (ppp) of four trillion.

So, if NATO dissolves, Europe should be perfectly capable of defending itself. It it cannot, it is because it refuses to actually allocate resources for defense against an opponent it outweighs.

Europe does not need NATO to defend itself from Russia.

Now, let us be even more brutally frank: Since WWII, Europe has been an American protectorate. It is that simple. Some commenters will probably disagree, but I’m not going to waste time proving the obvious. Indeed, “protectorate” is a kind way of putting it.

The truth is that the US withdrawing is no danger to Europe. Europe has all the resources it needs to defend itself and care for its own affairs: people, a large economy, and technology. What specific technologies it does not have, it is completely capable of developing or buying.

Furthermore, NATO expansion is one of the major causes for enmity between Europe and Russia; Russians note that NATO is far, far more powerful than they are, and they see its expansion (especially as George Bush Sr. promised NATO wouldn’t expand) as offensive. (I agree with them. You may be foolish, and disagree, but US foreign policy bobbleheads and “thinkers” have been quite clear about their intent.)

The real threat to Europe is not Russia, nor US disengagement, but, as it has been since German unification under Bismarck, Germany.

Germany is already integrating the units of smaller European countries into its own military.

Germany (and, yes, Germany WAS the prime mover) already destroyed an entire European country, Greece, to bail out its own bankers.

Germany’s industrial policy and clout has impoverished the European “South” through enforced austerity and the imposition of the Euro, which makes German exports cheaper than they should be and the exports of Southern European more expensive than they should be.

Germany essentially runs the EU’s monetary policy at this point, a policy which has been in the self-perceived interests of Germany, and only in any other country’s interest by coincidence. (Something the French should get around to noticing, and stop kneepadding for the next German annexation of France, even it is in name only.)

Germany is the actual threat to other European countries’ sovereignty. This might be acceptable if a German hegemony had a record of caring about what happens to non-German countries, but the record is clear and visible that it is not, and this is on the ground in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece and even France.

It is entirely true that the entire Eurocrat class is implicated, and that every European country has collaborators, including France (Macron is merely the latest to take the throne, and there is no question of his complicity, as he ran Hollande’s austerity program).

Nonetheless, and weirdly, the policies they promote are the ones that rebound to the benefit of Germany, and it is Germany who is widely understood, as in the case of Greece, to have the deciding vote.

Europeans should decide if a further federalized European Union, run by the Germans, for the Germans, is what they want, because that is what is on offer.

Trump should be a sideshow issue for Europeans. He is not a significant danger to them, except in the sense that he may be unleashing the Germans even further.

As is often the case, the politicians Europeans should be most scared of are their own: the collaborators who run their governments, and the German politicans who are sure that what is best for other Europeans countries is, coincidentally, identical with what they are sure is best for Germany.

(And anyone who thinks that Merkel is not essentially malign simply has not paid attention. If an evil person opposes a more evil person they do not become “good.” This is not to deny, that like many evil people, she has not done some good things.)

Look to your own house for the person who will beat, abuse, and likely kill you. This is true at every level.

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Getting Trump Right and Wrong

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On May 5, 2017

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After the election, it seemed that I had gotten Trump more right than many others, and I had, but I had gotten two important things wrong, as well.

I assumed that because Trump was a competent campaigner, and had been willing to let competent people on his team run during the campaign, he would be a relatively competent as an bargainer about those things he cared about.

And I assumed that while he clearly didn’t have strong policy preferences about most things, that there was a good chance that his core program of hitting trade deals, the wall, immigration, and a replacement for Obamacare weren’t compete ass.

I wasn’t certain on this, because it was clear he was very non-ideological, but because it was in his self-interest in terms of being re-elected and being popular, both of which would be important to him (Trump hates losing and wants adulation), I thought a sincere effort was possible.

Certainly he wasn’t going to be a policy expert, but letting the right people run things and having a bottom line policy outcome seemed possible.

I was wrong.

Trump proves, mostly, to be far more weak than I expected. I wrote that I expected an imperial court with courtiers being important multiple times, but it has been worse than I expected.

None of this is to say that I discounted Trump breaking his core promises as a possibility, I said it could happen, but as with Obama he has been swifter and worse in this regard than I expected.

My final decision on Trump, in the campaign, was that he was beyond the pale, but that Clinton was more likely to start a serious war with Russia than he was. Trump’s actions in Syria haven’t exactly warmed the cockles of my heart, but I remain convinced that Clinton was an abomination in her foreign policy, and so far, despite saber rattling and hitting a Syrian airfield, I do not feel that he’s worse than Clinton would have been. (I would have expected a no fly zone in Syria already, if she were President and Trump has not bombed more than I think she would have–rather less, despite the howls.)

Because of this, I didn’t endorse either candidate, and I remain fine with that decision.

Neither of them is a prize. We know exactly what Clinton will be like, she confirmed in Libya that Iraq was not a misjudgment or mistake, by the way she thinks. As for Trump, well, the variance is high. He’s said all sorts of things, who the hell knows what he’ll do?

Or:

Now Trump has said all sorts of things at this point. Who knows what he’ll do? I get that, but here’s what I also get: We all know what Clinton will do.

Both are scum, Trump proves to be scum mostly in a very ordinary Republican way, rather than his own special type of scum, but he has done little that Republican Candidate X wouldn’t have done, other than his travel orders, which were struck down.

The sad part about Trump, to me, is that he’s a normal politician in the ways that matter, after all. It was clear  he wasn’t Hitler or Mussolini, but he isn’t even a right-wing populist in policy (as opposed to in rhetoric and campaign) terms. And, he hasn’t and isn’t going to keep his core promises, which will do more damage to American democracy than if he had stuck by them, like them or not.

I also feel, as I said multiple times during the election, that having Trump win 16 was dodging a bullet, because if he had lost, the next person to try the right wing populist playbook would have been far worse.

All that said, I clearly got stuff wrong about Trump, and stuff that matters, and I apologize to my readers.

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Trump Is Not Wrong to Be Willing to Talk to North Korea’s Leader

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On May 2, 2017

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Oh my, the wringing of hands over Trump saying he’d be willing to talk to Kim Jong Un.

Let’s get the disclaimers for idiots out of the way: Kim Jon Un appears to be a very bad man and Trump often does bad things, or rather, tries to do bad things that are then blocked.

This is not one of those things–even after one stops laughing at people pretending that the White House hasn’t entertained plenty of dictators with blood soaked hands, just as bad as Kim.

For 60 years, the policy for dealing with North Korea has been to keep them in a cage, and it hasn’t worked.

North Korea wants a formal peace treaty, and feels that, absent nukes, they would be attacked.

Given what happened to Qaddafi (sodomized with a knife, then killed) after he gave up his nuclear program, there might be something to this–especially because the West keeps laughing at the idea of a formal peace treaty. If you think they aren’t going to attack, why not give them one? Or at least offer it as a prize for cooperation, along with reducing some of the frankly insane sanctions?

(This approach, by the way, is favored by most South Koreans, the people with the most to lose if the situation turns into war and Seoul gets flattened.)

Is Trump supposed to not meet with the King of Saudi Arabia? Do you know how he treats Shi’ites and women? Do you know what he is doing to Yemen right now? Is he not supposed to meet with George W. Bush, his predecessor, the butcher of Iraq?

Stop clutching pearls. Yeah, Trump is scum, but this is ridiculous. Diplomacy is about talking with your enemies, not just your friends; it is about talking with bad people (which is why everyone keeps talking to the US) when they have something you want.

Trump is right, in this case, and the squealing about it is not only pearl-clutching bullshit, it makes an actual war more likely, as did hitting Trump so hard on Russia that better relations with Russia (the only other country with enough nukes to destroy the world) seem to be off the table. Because God knows, we wouldn’t want good relations between the two nuclear super-powers, and Russia may not be a super power in another way, but it still has a ton of nukes.

A man may be a bad man, and your political opponent, without being wrong about everything, and acting as if he is could cost hundreds of millions of people their lives.

Stop.

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Was All the “Trump is Hitler” Rhetoric Right?

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On April 29, 2017

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On October 17th, I wrote that demonizing Trump as fascist had consequences.

To most Americans fascist = holocaust, Hitler, and World War II. To be a fascist is to be the worst thing possible.

Popular culture is full of references of going back and killing Hitler before he became powerful. We bewail that no one did anything. We blame Neville Chamberlain for responding to Hitler’s provocations by making concessions.

It is generally accepted that trying to make peace with a fascist is foolishness.

Donald Trump is a fascist, so are many of his followers, and those who follow him but who aren’t fascists are still working to try and get a fascist into power. They must be stopped, and our culture believes violence is justified in stopping fascists.

That is the logic of the rhetoric.

I think it is now pretty clear that Trump is not Hitler reborn. He is not even Mussolini reborn. He was, at most, a right-wing populist, but he’s not even that. He’s just another oligarch who flirted with populist-right ideas, but has mostly not even followed through on those.

He was never Hitler. I didn’t think he was during the campaign, and said so.

And now we have polarization: antifas and fascists. People who didn’t exist on the public stage before they were vaulted there, and with that polarization, we have violence.

I don’t have anything in particular against punching Nazis (though I do have something for free speech), but these people have been elevated from cranks no one knew about, to somebodies.

Only one prominent Trump advisor can credibly be called something of a fascist: Bannon, and he is outweighed by people who are just standard, out-of-the-can neoliberals, like Trump’s daughter, and son-in-law, and, well, almost everyone else. There are a few nasty racists, like Sessions, but they existed long before Trump. There are climate denialists, but that’s a Republican party thing, and so on.

Trump’s not Hitler. He never was. There is not going to be a Reichstag fire in which he seizes power.

The fascist line, like the Russian pawn line, were simply anti-Trump political lines. Extremely dangerous, and in the case of the Russian line xenophobic and dangerous, but just propaganda.

And millions have fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker and are now basing their lives and identities around it, on both sides. This hasn’t weakened the “alt-right,” it has strengthened it, and it sure as hell didn’t stop Trump from being elected.

Skipping a few half million dollar a plate dinners and campaigning in the rust-belt? That might have stopped it. Not opposing a $15/minimum wage, that might have stopped it. Not trying to get “moderate” Republicans to vote Democratic and ignoring traditional Democratic constituencies, that might have stopped it.

Not Hitler, and calling him Hitler didn’t work.

Genius.

I wonder if our next dynastic appointee, Chelsea Clinton, is even just a little more competent as a campaigner than her mother?

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Steve Bannon In (and Out?) of Donald Trump’s Imperial Court

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On April 14, 2017

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Steve Bannon

When I wrote about the Trump administration before it existed, I noted that the Trump administration would be an Emperor’s Court. Because Trump has few firm ideas of his own and is extremely easily influenced, the best courtiers would rule the roost and determine policy.

Steve Bannon, by current reports, is out of favor and may well be on his way out.

Coincidentally, Trump has missiled a Syrian airbase and dropped “the mother of all bombs.” Coincidentally, word is coming out of the White House that, hey, maybe NAFTA isn’t so bad. Coincidentally, China is no longer considered a currency manipulator.

When people started mocking Trump by calling Bannon president, I noted that it was an attack which might work, and word has also come out that Trump hated that.

Trump is defined by little more than vanity, and he puts family first.

And so Kushner and Ivanka, backed by the deep state and more traditional Republicans (of the “tax cuts and bomb foreigners” variety), have the upper hand.

There is no question that Bannon is a piece of work, but him losing so much influence is not an unmitigated good.  Bannon is a nativist.

He was the guy, along with Trump on the campaign trail, who wanted the Muslim ban, aye. But he also favored rewriting trade deals, hitting China on manufacturing (it is true that China no longer keeps its currency low, but they did for ages and it gutted US manufacturing), bringing those jobs back to America, improving relations with Russia, and, oh yeah, not getting involved in stupid Middle Eastern wars (aside from fighting ISIS).

The comment section of Breitbart, when Trump hit the Syrian airfield was nearly 100 percent dismayed–as much as the most fiercely anti-war leftists.

The practical result of Bannon’s disempowerment is that brown Americans and visitors would be treated better, and that’s good, but most of what Trump wanted to do that wasn’t Republican standard, for the good as well as bad, goes out with Bannon.

Trump is being trained, well. Firing missiles and dropping bombs has gotten him the best media coverage of his presidency so far.  The “serious people” love killing (the right) foreigners, and the foreign policy elite which was threatened by Trump/Bannon nativism is rushing to praise Donald.

Not coincidentally, I think that Trump and Republicans will suffer for it electorally.

This version of Trump might be as bad as Hillary on foreign affairs (remembers she called for the missile attack, and watch North Korea), and while he lacks her saving graces on social affairs, as Kushner and Ivanka gain influence, they may make Trump a lot better on social civil liberties.

Though very competent in his way, Bannon was never quite a Svengali (as with his fumbling of the immigration order), but he is the only person in the administration genuinely angry about what happened to the working and middle class in America, and how the financial crisis was handled by bailing out banks and fucking ordinary people.

If Bannon loses this fight completely, Trump will be little more than an overly capricious, yet standard, Republican President.

And, folks, Trump was never going to be Hitler and not improving relations with Russia is a disaster, whatever the propaganda machine may tell you. (And that Syria attack would not have happened if improving relations with Russia were still important.)

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Trump Fires Missiles on Syrian Airbase

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On April 7, 2017

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Sigh. This is not smart. Let us hope it does not escalate. The administration has said it is a “one-off,” but if any allegation of chemical attacks can cause the US to strike, there will be more chemical attacks.

Of course, many people usually critical of Trump are now “rallying around.” Nothing like blood to get Americans to support a President.

Syria is not a good place to be playing games, given that Russia is already there. (An agreement on coordinating flights between the US and Russia has been cancelled by the Russians.)

That Trump is getting really good media on this, especially on TV, is particularly bad. Trump craves approval, and he is being trained, right now, to be violent. The consequences of this are potentially catastrophic.

Update: No, this is not about Trump being worse than Clinton on this issue.

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