Agree with pretty much all of this except this: "The democratization of fundraising through the Internet has also created a perverse incentive: people are paying off their politicians handsomely to be ineffective clowns. At least corporate dark money wanted some tangible policy."
Part of the real difficulty in dislodging these actors is that yes, they're getting mass donations but ALSO are being underwritten by the S-Corp class you identified previously - billionaires and centimillionaires who have also had their brains rotted by decades of conservative media and are paying to be entertained as much as they're paying to maintain local regulatory impunity. We see this now with one of those dark money groups being explicitly a party to the negotiations for resolving the Speakership - but on the side of the nihilist clowns, not the establishment.
Isn’t there some utility to the s-corp crowd in that as long as politics is spectacle, new laws are not being implemented and therefore existing structures/hierarchies/benefits are being maintained.
It’s a version of the conservative turn to cultural combat to avoid discussion of economic issues upon which the preferred positions are very unpopular.
It’s also reflected in the absence of a party policy by the Republicans. Avoidance of change through enforced stasis.
I think the recurring debt ceiling issue lays bare the faulty assumption that “existing structures/hierarchies/benefits are being maintained”. And then there is, of course, our slowly crumbling, under-maintained infrastructure (invested in heavily by the same falla that later lamented a “military industrial complex”, you know, Ike, a republican!)
Anyhow, to be intentionally punny AND to butcher concepts/sayings ancient and modern: the sword of Damocles is coming from inside the House!
for sure - this is kind of the baseline approach of all contemporary conservative politics, but there's also a much more active destructive urge embodied in this part of it, beyond the more technocratic regulatory state rollbacks of the Reagan-Bush era.
I’m commenting to submit something for the mailbag post because I disabled the email alerts from substack.
I’m writing on the night of January 8, after the fascist putsch attempt in Brazil, and after Lula correctly labeled the attempt as fascist. My question: are you able to speculate as to the reasons why there is persistent resistance among my co-partisans on the left to describing the (post-)Trumpian attack on democracy here in the US as fascist?
I can think of several categories of motives: ideological (“saying they’re fascists will subordinate the left to neoliberal factions”); professional (“I have a book saying this isn’t fascism, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it”); and social (“calling it fascism is cringe af”). I am very interested in your thoughts on this question. I find it so frustrating.
Ugh, what I mean to ask is, can you speculate on why this sentiment has staying power on the left? Sorry if I’ve been unclear. It’s late and I’m upset.
Somehow fitting that one of McCarthy's first acts as speaker was to swear in George Santos. Kinda emblematic of the state of the GOP atm. All the concessions granted to the golpista wing point towards an ever more dysfunctional house, with grandstanding promoted over actual legislation
The US has a long history of acrimonious legislatures, mostly concerning the contest over slavery in the 19th century. As described by Joanne B. Freeman in The Field of Blood - the shenanigans (gag order), intimidation, and violence just kept escalating until the civil war and were often readily egged on by the congressman’s constituents back home (she recounts cases of voters sending their representatives guns).
In your opinion are there better options to combatting this type of hostage taking besides invoking something like the 14th amendment? Unwinding gerrymandered districts, open primaries, the Republican Party not winning elections all would help generally but don’t guarantee these folks won’t be elected - they clearly have a constituency somewhere.
by far the simplest thing would be to say, double the size of the House (really it should be about 5x as big or more, if you go on the population:representation ratio from the early US but, baby steps); even with gerrymandering the relative over-representation of small states would be massively diluted, and you would basically solve the Electoral College/popular vote problem in one go (at least for a generation or so). And moving to a system where any given Representative could derail things (which would have a tendency to reinforce party discipline, generally) is good. In large states you might even get a chance to move towards mixed-member constituencies but, that's kind of speculative. So: much bigger House!
That’s how I feel too - short of some sort of huge unprecedentedly successful persuasion campaign, what can you do to stop a determined constituency set on national self immolation.
Maybe stronger party systems that’d truly punish the Gaetz’s or create a reward system that’d be too irresistible to throw away for the life of a poster.
You called performative politics, I saw the video when Matt Gaetz voted for Donald Trump. He was having fun. We live in Instagram and tik tok era, politicians wants to be part of this performance. We saw Kanye west where it took him because he craved attention. Even Elon Musk is living through his social media his attention cravings moments. I believe even left party isn’t innocent in this. See AOC talking with Gaetz too.
Agree with pretty much all of this except this: "The democratization of fundraising through the Internet has also created a perverse incentive: people are paying off their politicians handsomely to be ineffective clowns. At least corporate dark money wanted some tangible policy."
Part of the real difficulty in dislodging these actors is that yes, they're getting mass donations but ALSO are being underwritten by the S-Corp class you identified previously - billionaires and centimillionaires who have also had their brains rotted by decades of conservative media and are paying to be entertained as much as they're paying to maintain local regulatory impunity. We see this now with one of those dark money groups being explicitly a party to the negotiations for resolving the Speakership - but on the side of the nihilist clowns, not the establishment.
Isn’t there some utility to the s-corp crowd in that as long as politics is spectacle, new laws are not being implemented and therefore existing structures/hierarchies/benefits are being maintained.
It’s a version of the conservative turn to cultural combat to avoid discussion of economic issues upon which the preferred positions are very unpopular.
It’s also reflected in the absence of a party policy by the Republicans. Avoidance of change through enforced stasis.
I think the recurring debt ceiling issue lays bare the faulty assumption that “existing structures/hierarchies/benefits are being maintained”. And then there is, of course, our slowly crumbling, under-maintained infrastructure (invested in heavily by the same falla that later lamented a “military industrial complex”, you know, Ike, a republican!)
Anyhow, to be intentionally punny AND to butcher concepts/sayings ancient and modern: the sword of Damocles is coming from inside the House!
for sure - this is kind of the baseline approach of all contemporary conservative politics, but there's also a much more active destructive urge embodied in this part of it, beyond the more technocratic regulatory state rollbacks of the Reagan-Bush era.
that's interesting!
A dumb comment but: I love the title of this post
Totally off-topic but your twitter is deactivated and I want to make sure you see this entry for your "Claremont is the nerve center of American fascism" files https://twitter.com/edburmila/status/1613289187557494784?s=20&t=rT9AEcVLGKuXx8W6uau6Ew
I’m commenting to submit something for the mailbag post because I disabled the email alerts from substack.
I’m writing on the night of January 8, after the fascist putsch attempt in Brazil, and after Lula correctly labeled the attempt as fascist. My question: are you able to speculate as to the reasons why there is persistent resistance among my co-partisans on the left to describing the (post-)Trumpian attack on democracy here in the US as fascist?
I can think of several categories of motives: ideological (“saying they’re fascists will subordinate the left to neoliberal factions”); professional (“I have a book saying this isn’t fascism, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it”); and social (“calling it fascism is cringe af”). I am very interested in your thoughts on this question. I find it so frustrating.
Ugh, what I mean to ask is, can you speculate on why this sentiment has staying power on the left? Sorry if I’ve been unclear. It’s late and I’m upset.
Somehow fitting that one of McCarthy's first acts as speaker was to swear in George Santos. Kinda emblematic of the state of the GOP atm. All the concessions granted to the golpista wing point towards an ever more dysfunctional house, with grandstanding promoted over actual legislation
The US has a long history of acrimonious legislatures, mostly concerning the contest over slavery in the 19th century. As described by Joanne B. Freeman in The Field of Blood - the shenanigans (gag order), intimidation, and violence just kept escalating until the civil war and were often readily egged on by the congressman’s constituents back home (she recounts cases of voters sending their representatives guns).
In your opinion are there better options to combatting this type of hostage taking besides invoking something like the 14th amendment? Unwinding gerrymandered districts, open primaries, the Republican Party not winning elections all would help generally but don’t guarantee these folks won’t be elected - they clearly have a constituency somewhere.
Any tactics used in Europe that could help?
no idea what to do
by far the simplest thing would be to say, double the size of the House (really it should be about 5x as big or more, if you go on the population:representation ratio from the early US but, baby steps); even with gerrymandering the relative over-representation of small states would be massively diluted, and you would basically solve the Electoral College/popular vote problem in one go (at least for a generation or so). And moving to a system where any given Representative could derail things (which would have a tendency to reinforce party discipline, generally) is good. In large states you might even get a chance to move towards mixed-member constituencies but, that's kind of speculative. So: much bigger House!
That’s how I feel too - short of some sort of huge unprecedentedly successful persuasion campaign, what can you do to stop a determined constituency set on national self immolation.
Maybe stronger party systems that’d truly punish the Gaetz’s or create a reward system that’d be too irresistible to throw away for the life of a poster.
demobilization because people get bored/frustrated
The presidency of Dwayne Camacho in Mike Judge’s idiocracy turned out to be more prescient than I expect he intended it to be.
I enjoyed the writing more than usual on this one, John. Sharp points, well-phrased. Thank you.
You called performative politics, I saw the video when Matt Gaetz voted for Donald Trump. He was having fun. We live in Instagram and tik tok era, politicians wants to be part of this performance. We saw Kanye west where it took him because he craved attention. Even Elon Musk is living through his social media his attention cravings moments. I believe even left party isn’t innocent in this. See AOC talking with Gaetz too.