> "The only analogue I can come up with is foreign policy: There have been times when American foreign policy has sought to give foreign dictators what they want in order to prevent them from making more trouble."
There's a piece I've been wanting to write for the Bulwark. Give it a clickbaity title like 'Nikki Haley is a European'. (My s…
> "The only analogue I can come up with is foreign policy: There have been times when American foreign policy has sought to give foreign dictators what they want in order to prevent them from making more trouble."
There's a piece I've been wanting to write for the Bulwark. Give it a clickbaity title like 'Nikki Haley is a European'. (My sense of what is clickbaity is poisoned by the fact that I actually care about foreign policy.) Throughout the entire Trump experience, the Republicans have been free-riders on the security guarantee provided by the Democrats' nuclear umbrella, eternally counting on Democrats and their voters to spend their political capital not to achieve their political goals but to defend America and the rule of law, because Democrats care about that sort of thing. They have in fact actively interfered with Democratic efforts to do the same, specifically in order to make sure that Democrats spend more and Republicans spend less time and effort protecting the country from Trump's irresponsibility. Kevin McCarthy can go down to Mar-a-Lago less than a month after Trump tries a coup in order to get Trump's mailing lists of small-dollar voters - after all, as Mitch McConnell says, 'the Democrats are going to take care of this son of a bitch for us.'
Republicans have fed the alligator not in the hopes that the alligator will eat them last, but because they hope that the alligator-catcher will be too wounded from his fight with it to keep them from enjoying the catbird seat in Washington D.C. I know what Nikki Haley would have said about Europeans who refused to do anything to oppose the Soviet Union because they felt they were protected by NATO's security guarantee. I don't know what Nikki Haley would have said about Europeans who actively aided the Soviet Union in the hopes that they and the Americans would take each other out so that they could become the premier world power again.
But I know what she says right now - that Lavrentiy Beria 'was the right man at the right time'.
Reminds me of Reagan talking about and campaigning by demonizing welfare recipients, and also saying that he can’t balance the budget because of these payments. Reagan knew full well that the Democrats would not call his bluff and would continue to fight for the needy, allowing Reagan to use the situation for political points.
This is a great analogy. To take it a step further what these European leaders (GOP establishment) failed to appreciate is that their citizenry was only listening to Pravda and CCCP state media (Fox, Newsmax, etc) and would eventually come for them.
This is 100% correct, and you could see the exact same contours in America's COVID response as well. Democrats killed themselves with pro-social policy, while GOP undermined and ran against it while nonetheless benefitting from the upsides.
Bingo, that's a good one. Democrats get blamed for everything COVID, down to the response, vaccines, everything. Republicans simply oppose every response because they had no solution except, ”Nothing to see here, now get back to work” to ”Well, it's in God's hands, so let's pray more, and get back to work.”
It was the pandemic, not Trump, that left me convinced that Republicans are dangerous. Not a both-sides thing, rather illogical and irrational. Dangerous, in other words. It was during the pandemic that I finally convinced myself that they are domestic terrorists. ”The rule of law” cannot stop them any more than it was able to stop 9/11 hijackers or Timothy McVeigh.
JVL always says while kidding on the square that Biden is Reagan's third term.
Nah, man, if Biden was Reagan's third term, he would have laughed and cheered on the plague that was killing his political enemies, not given up every bit of political capital he could to try to stop it.
Democrat is used here as a catchphrase for a bigger coalition than how we would have defined the Democratic Party even 10 years ago. America in 2023 and presumably 2024 has the cult of Trump, and then there is everyone else. Republican is the label of the first and Democrat is representative of the latter.
As JVL would say: I don't make the rules.
I'll note that this also happened around 1860 as individual Democrats, tired of the minority Southern white population controlling the organs, policy, and legislature of the national government in a similarly tantrum-based way turned to the nascent Republican Party to put a stop to that nonsense. After the war settled some things, many returned to the Democratic Party (sans insurrectionists for enough time to get some good things done), but many also stayed. Some of the messiness of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries stem from that re-sorting of people as well as allowing insurrectionists to resume power.
There is a great idea in here that is a bit broader than William’s one article. The Bulwark could have a weekly or monthly community-sourced article. I am sure there are others who would be interested in contributing.
> "The only analogue I can come up with is foreign policy: There have been times when American foreign policy has sought to give foreign dictators what they want in order to prevent them from making more trouble."
There's a piece I've been wanting to write for the Bulwark. Give it a clickbaity title like 'Nikki Haley is a European'. (My sense of what is clickbaity is poisoned by the fact that I actually care about foreign policy.) Throughout the entire Trump experience, the Republicans have been free-riders on the security guarantee provided by the Democrats' nuclear umbrella, eternally counting on Democrats and their voters to spend their political capital not to achieve their political goals but to defend America and the rule of law, because Democrats care about that sort of thing. They have in fact actively interfered with Democratic efforts to do the same, specifically in order to make sure that Democrats spend more and Republicans spend less time and effort protecting the country from Trump's irresponsibility. Kevin McCarthy can go down to Mar-a-Lago less than a month after Trump tries a coup in order to get Trump's mailing lists of small-dollar voters - after all, as Mitch McConnell says, 'the Democrats are going to take care of this son of a bitch for us.'
Republicans have fed the alligator not in the hopes that the alligator will eat them last, but because they hope that the alligator-catcher will be too wounded from his fight with it to keep them from enjoying the catbird seat in Washington D.C. I know what Nikki Haley would have said about Europeans who refused to do anything to oppose the Soviet Union because they felt they were protected by NATO's security guarantee. I don't know what Nikki Haley would have said about Europeans who actively aided the Soviet Union in the hopes that they and the Americans would take each other out so that they could become the premier world power again.
But I know what she says right now - that Lavrentiy Beria 'was the right man at the right time'.
Reminds me of Reagan talking about and campaigning by demonizing welfare recipients, and also saying that he can’t balance the budget because of these payments. Reagan knew full well that the Democrats would not call his bluff and would continue to fight for the needy, allowing Reagan to use the situation for political points.
This is a great analogy. To take it a step further what these European leaders (GOP establishment) failed to appreciate is that their citizenry was only listening to Pravda and CCCP state media (Fox, Newsmax, etc) and would eventually come for them.
This is 100% correct, and you could see the exact same contours in America's COVID response as well. Democrats killed themselves with pro-social policy, while GOP undermined and ran against it while nonetheless benefitting from the upsides.
Doubtless there are other examples as well.
Bingo, that's a good one. Democrats get blamed for everything COVID, down to the response, vaccines, everything. Republicans simply oppose every response because they had no solution except, ”Nothing to see here, now get back to work” to ”Well, it's in God's hands, so let's pray more, and get back to work.”
It was the pandemic, not Trump, that left me convinced that Republicans are dangerous. Not a both-sides thing, rather illogical and irrational. Dangerous, in other words. It was during the pandemic that I finally convinced myself that they are domestic terrorists. ”The rule of law” cannot stop them any more than it was able to stop 9/11 hijackers or Timothy McVeigh.
JVL always says while kidding on the square that Biden is Reagan's third term.
Nah, man, if Biden was Reagan's third term, he would have laughed and cheered on the plague that was killing his political enemies, not given up every bit of political capital he could to try to stop it.
Democrat is used here as a catchphrase for a bigger coalition than how we would have defined the Democratic Party even 10 years ago. America in 2023 and presumably 2024 has the cult of Trump, and then there is everyone else. Republican is the label of the first and Democrat is representative of the latter.
As JVL would say: I don't make the rules.
I'll note that this also happened around 1860 as individual Democrats, tired of the minority Southern white population controlling the organs, policy, and legislature of the national government in a similarly tantrum-based way turned to the nascent Republican Party to put a stop to that nonsense. After the war settled some things, many returned to the Democratic Party (sans insurrectionists for enough time to get some good things done), but many also stayed. Some of the messiness of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries stem from that re-sorting of people as well as allowing insurrectionists to resume power.
History echoes.
That is very, very smart.
There is a great idea in here that is a bit broader than William’s one article. The Bulwark could have a weekly or monthly community-sourced article. I am sure there are others who would be interested in contributing.
Get this man to write it.
(I'm one hundred percent serious about writing the piece and I'll write for free. Email me. There are words in here that have to come out.)
Don't wait, write. (Then edit.)
If it needs to be said, that's more important than whether the Bulwark is the platform.
If not, you should write it and publish it on the blog site that they give every substack member and you can share the link here.
I look forward to it