Despite storm clouds, I think we'll probably muddle through Godwilling. The thing I'm not that concerned about is another Trump presidency. He might fray things with America's friends a little, but he will likely stop her foes from being quite so bold. It won't be worse than another 4 years of Biden/Harris, and will almost certainly be better imo. Then maybe 4 years later we can have some better candidates again.
We're in deep shit and for all the reasons you so beautifully elucidate and likely more. Today, on the 4th -- I don't feel hopeful. Have we ever had such horrid choices for president? Not sure what we can do but the Dems had better get their act together. Somehow, some way...
"The 80s called, and want their foreign policy back."
Remember when Romney warned us about Russia? Even when the grown ups were in charge, there were no grown ups in charge. Obama went around the world apologizing for the US to whomever would listen, and let Putin walk in the Crimea. And telling the Russians to wait until after the election.
Where is our Thatcher, where is our Reagan, where is our John Paul II? We the people don't understand the grave danger the west is in. We need leaders who do understand, and have the guts to do something about it?
All over the world, Western democracies are led by mediocre people. No one of stature has arisen to face or even acknowledge the challenge of the autocratic crazies.
I subscribe to two Substacks, this one and Noah Smith's. I find them to be complementary: yours focuses on (geo)politics and Russia as adversary, Noah's on economics and China as adversary.
Today Noah posted his own "assessment of threats to the Republic", and I think it is a good counterpoint to this essay:
Noah thinks Trump will be elected. That's not his preference and he thinks some bad things will happen, but also that it won't be "Republic-destroying". So he thinks America will muddle through domestically.
On the other hand, he thinks the China-Russia axis is a danger. He mentions the risk of war over Taiwan in the short term, but what he seems to be most concerned about, is that over the long term, they will expand their spheres of influence at the expense of America (and also at the expense of liberal democracy).
Hope you feel a little better, having gotten all of that out. :-) I was surprised you were able to hold it back for so long. Maybe you were preoccupied with the French and British elections, among your many other doings. I find myself in morose agreement with almost everything you vented.
Permit me a few minor observations; I wouldn't really call them quibbles.
Your bottom line re the dangers of nuclear proliferation seem to me to be spot on. However, if the US ever felt compelled to launch a nuclear strike at the DPRK (which I doubt), it wouldn't be traveling over Russia. It would surely be submarine launched at a relatively short range. I really think any attack on NK would be a conventional one. No point in hurting our friends in the South or annoying the Chinese to the point that they might want to respond in kind. One hopes we learned some lessons from the events of November 1950.
I was glad to see you highlight the rise of anti-Semitism and see in it a breakdown of the intellectual and moral environment. I have never understood it. Always supported Israel, but was never a Zionist, thinking the US to be the real Promised Land. Now the scales have fallen from my eyes, or rather, been knocked off by the domestic reaction to the appalling events of 7 Oct 23. I thought Charlottesville to be an aberration. I was wrong.
The Supreme Court has run amuck and is in dire need of reform. That cannot happen (under the old rules) unless the Democratic Party retains or gains control of the Presidency, Senate, and House. I didn't see that happening even under the best of circumstances, and now I think it's totally beyond reach. Maybe a newly-empowered Democratic President could impose a code of ethics on the Court unilaterally. And have the Executive Branch impeach any justice who violated it. The King has so decreed. No need for judicial review.
I share your anger at the Democratic Party's and Biden Administration's failures to promote, visibly and publicly, the successes of younger members of the party and administration. What appears to be a toxic combination of self-delusion, hubris, and vanity means that there is now no viable Democratic alternative to a visibly impaired President. The experiences of 1968 are all too relevant here. To change candidates at this late stage of the game would make the impending disaster even worse, up and down the ticket. I'm furious that we have left our country in this position.
And our democracy's domestic enemies are indeed well-organized, well-financed and utterly determined to bring democracy down. The blueprint for a Christofascist takeover (not a theocratic one. Only one religion counts) of the U.S. government has been made public in Project 2025. Today's nauseating gloating by the Kevin Roberts Creature hammers that point home. BTW, thank you for making me learn a new word - "gleichschaltung." That is indeed what we see underway here.
Kudos for the Edith Wilson reference.
And maybe a little harsh on Jen Rubin.
Otherwise, yes, to hell with all of them. Especially with the feckless holders of great power who feared to use that power when they had the chance. Grrrrr. OK, now I've let it out, but I don't feel better.
Just for the record, during the year before Trump took office, tension concerning the North Korean nuclear threat was so great that when the early warning sirens in Hawaii accidentally went off, a significant number of Hawaiians believe the attach was real.
Trumps personal diplomacy with Kim, no matter how stomach churning, did in fact significantly reduce the tension. The threat of launch from the North was greatly reduced.
Under Biden’s leadership, the tensions have ratcheted back up. A likely scenario if Trump is elected is that he will return to his successful strategy and again diffuse the Korean situation.
There are significant unknowns about how his policies will play out around the world if he returns to office, but it would be difficult achieve worse results than those experienced the last 3 years.
The decision on immunity only ratifies what was the assumed understanding and practice for 200 years. The president can only be held accountable for official acts by the voters and by impeachment, not through state or federal prosecution.
BTW, the military and law enforcement officers are trained not to obey orders they consider unlawful. A presidential order to assassinate or imprison political opponents or media people without judicial process would not survive its journey through the chain of command.
Biden and the people around him—through vanity, power-lust, self-delusion, or outright mendacity—have put America and the world in unspeakable danger.” (Claire Berlinski)
This isn’t quite right. Biden may be complicit but ultimately the fault isn’t mostly his. It’s the neoconservatives, the liberal internationalists and the Atlanticists, globalists all, who are responsible for squandering the strength of the West. I’m sorry to say, Claire, that it’s people who believe what you believe who have emasculated the liberal world and empowered our enemies.
It was the most enthusiastic advocates of the Pax Americana who mistakenly believed that the United States and its feckless European and Japanese allies were so remarkably powerful that they they could take on all comers and force all adversaries to relent. That’s what they thought when they prosecuted two wars in Iraq and one decades-long conflict in Afghanistan. Not only did we lose all of those wars but we wasted trillions of dollars. Had those trillions of dollars been more wisely deployed, perhaps the West would be less weak than it is now.
It was those same Uber-liberals who were so enamored with the free-flow of people and capital that they threw restraint to the wind and happily imported tens of millions of immigrants while at the same time exporting a significant portion our industrial base to third world countries, some of which (like China) are our enemies. It was the globalist elites in the United States who did that. The culprits are the intellectuals, the centralizers and the crowd who worshipped at the alter of increasing global integration.
It’s startling, Claire, that you don’t understand why citizens in the United States, France, Italy, the Netherlands and other Western nations reject expending the resources necessary to underwrite the Pax Americana. Has it occurred to you that this rejection stems from the fact that people who support the policies that you support, have wasted trillions of tax dollars on wars that have been lost while watching immigrants crater their wages and, in the case of Western Europe, insult and sometimes eviscerate their culture?
And then there’s Ukraine; by far the biggest mistake of all; it’s the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Some of your loyal readers have been around long enough to remember all the gloating that Ukraine supporters did at the beginning of the War. They assured us that Russia was too militarily, economically and financially weak to prevail. They were terribly wrong. This same crowd assured us that Western intentions were purely noble. They were partly right; Putin’s invasion was monstrous. What Biden and his credulous European lackeys failed to admit was that the war in Ukraine was a proxy war, designed in part to cut Russia down to size. That’s why Biden squelched all attempts to negotiate an accommodation early on. You opposed those efforts, Claire. Are you willing to admit now that it would be better today, if those efforts had been given a chance?
Like the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the calamities of unimpeded immigration and free trade, the tragedy in Ukraine has poisoned the chalice of citizen’s support for the Pax Americana. It didn’t have to be this way, but the globalists never knew when to stop. Their arrogance was so luminescent that they thought the West could never lose.
The Russian alliance with China, North Korea and Iran is stronger than ever. Those powers, at least for now, are ascendent. It’s the mistakes of globalist leaders that have strengthened our enemies; the biggest mistake of all was not nipping the Ukraine imbroglio in the bud while there was still a chance. But for the war in Ukraine, the alliance between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran would not be a budding colossus.
Nials Ferguson has two essays up at the Free Press that are well-worth reading (they’re not free). He makes a claim that is as shocking as it is depressing. He describes in some detail how the United States looks remarkably like the Soviet Union in the period immediately before its collapse. It didn’t have to be this way if only our globalist rulers had exercised a modicum of modesty. Sadly it was arrogance they had in abundance, not humility.
Trump-Derangement Syndrome has also played a major role in the collapse of the Pax Americana. After all, there was no immigration crisis when Trump was President, or at the very least, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now.
However imperfectly, Trump tried to reinvigorate the American industrial base after years of neglect by the globalist cadres.
Trump realized that an uninterrupted series of wars in places Americans didn’t care about sapped American strength instead of enhancing it.
Trump understood that Europe’s failure to devote adequate resources to the common defense was disastrous; something the Europeans only figured out as they watched Ukraine get clobbered.
Trump begged our European allies to wean themselves off of Russian hydrocarbons, something Europe only began to do after bombs started dropping on Kyiv.
Trump understood what Biden never did (and you don’t either, Claire); husbanding American strength for things that really matter is a far wiser strategy than squandering American strength on peripheral concerns. He also understood what Biden never did; antagonizing Russia for no reason was a bad strategic bet.
Biden can’t fix Ukraine, Claire. None of his potential Democratic replacements can either. Neither can any other Western leader. Support for the Ukrainian war is plummeting in Europe and the United States.
Given the current reality, the man most likely to help Ukraine achieve a modestly successful outcome is none other than Donald Trump. It won’t be perfect but it will be far better than anything delivered by a Democratic President. You see, Trump doesn’t like to lose. All his potential Democratic opponents (and establishment Republicans) ever do is lose.
Wig-Wag, the essay you just posted cries out for a point by point response explaining where you went off the rails. I am not spending time with that tonight: I will just say that among the many things you 've got absolutely wrong is "husbanding American strength for things that really matter is a far wiser strategy than...(fighting about peripheral concerns)...antagonizing Russia for no reason was a bad strategic bet." You then go on to say, "Biden can't fix Ukraine," which is may well be true, but is absolutely no excuse for staying quiescent in response to Russian aggression.
The madness of Vlad Putin threatens all of Europe, in my opinion. Doing nothing that would "antagonize Russia" would be disastrous: we tried that when Putin's little Green Men invaded Crimea, and it made Russia more of a threat. Giving them Ukraine on a silver platter by failing to assist in its defense would be far worse. You complain about the trillions of dollars spent on wars, but you would bo down to dictators ... to save up for what? An even bigger Bavovna when Putin (or Xi, Kim or the mullahs) decide to tweak the tiger's tail by gobbling up a country that you consider more important to US interests?
You compound the impression that you are talking through your hat when you assert that Donald Trump -- yes, TRUMP - "also understood what Biden never did" about Russia. TRUMP? Trump understands ONLY what serves his personal brand and his bank account. Any sound policy decisions he makes are either at the behest of advisors or, as I suspect, are just random good luck. If you believe that criticism of DJT's judgement is somehow 'deranged', I would suggest you re-read the guy's tweets.
R Hodson, much like Claire, you’re whistling past the graveyard. She’s apoplectic that Biden hasn’t announced that he’s pulling out of the race because of whatever neurological infirmity he’s suffering from, but if he is indeed ill with dementia or Parkinson’s or something else, who’s been running American foreign policy for the past several months?
Of course it’s been Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan. Whatever specific differences Claire has with them, their policy inclinations fall well within the mainstream uniparty foreign policy consensus. If Biden pulls out and Harris, Newsom or Whitmer is nominated instead, whoever they select as foreign policy advisors will advocate for precisely the same failed policies that have brought us to this disastrous position in the first place.
Early on in the primary process, Claire extolled the virtues of Chris Christie and Nicki Halley. If either of them had defeated Trump for the GOP nomination, the Secretary of State and NSC Chief they would have selected would have adopted policies remarkably similar to the policies of their Democratic adversaries. Sure there would have been some differences but those differences would have been rounding errors.
Why is the Pax Americana literally collapsing before our eyes? Here’s a wake up call for you; it didn’t start with Biden’s dementia. The blame goes to all of the American Presidents who’ve held office in the 21st Century with one exception, Donald Trump.
George W. Bush and Condi Rice got the ball rolling in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama and John Kerry continued the long march to calamitous failure with their obsession with putting climate change at the center of our foreign policy. When President Biden bungled U.S. into the Ukraine conflict he didn’t do it because he was senile. He did it because like most of the Democrat and Republican Presidents who preceded him, he fervently believed in the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. The credo for that consensus is shoot first, ask questions later. The prevailing ideology of that consensus is a nostalgia and even a reverence for the good old days of the Cold War.
Trump is no genius and he’s certainly no messiah but he understood something that you and Claire don’t. He realized that the bipartisan foreign policy consensus operative since the end of the Cold War had passed its use by date. He realized that the United States had been profoundly weakened by the deindustrialization which resulted from his predecessors policies. He realized that the political comity necessary to sustain an assertive foreign policy had been weakened by massive immigration. Most importantly he realized that the United States was much weaker than it had been because it could no longer depend on its European and Japanese allies who had spent decades spending next to nothing on defense.
Trump understood that the status quo that Claire yearns for no longer worked and that a new approach was desperately needed. That new approach required a reset in America’s relationship with Europe, a reset with the nations in the Middle East and, most importantly, a reset with Russia. Trump’s passion for trying a new approach made Uniparty apparatchiks apoplectic. It made Claire apoplectic. When Trump was President they excoriated him at every opportunity; they continue to do so. Trump Derangement Syndrome has proven to be an even more serious ailment than Biden’s dementia.
The irony is that the collapse of the Pax Americana began on the watch of Trump’s predecessors in office. It temporarily abated when he was President and it reached a crescendo during Biden’s presidency.
The problem R Hodson is not that Biden is senile. The problem is that West’s foreign policy ideology is senile. More international integration, more international law and regulations, more wars and more immigration are bringing the Pax Americana to its knees. The only politician on the world stage who appreciates this is Donald Trump.
As for Claire, what she doesn’t realize is that the only hope that Ukraine has left is Donald Trump. If a Democrat is elected as our next President, the increasingly unstable status quo will prevail and Russia will bleed Ukraine to death. It’s obvious that all the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put Ukraine back together again, at least if that means the recovery of Crimea.
Unlike Biden or all of the other possible Democratic nominees, Trump hates losing. Democrats and establishment Republicans have proven that all they know how to do is lose. Sadly, their losses have been colossal; they destroyed the Pax Americana.
Maybe, just maybe, Trump can rescue Ukraine and start the slow and painful process of revivifying the Pax Americana. . One thing’s for sure; nobody else can.
I think your ideology is out of whack with reality, W-W. Trump can not and will not "rescue Ukraine." Sell it out, yes.
You keep talking about the Pax Americana: what do you think that consists of?
You say, " The problem is that West’s foreign policy ideology is senile. More international integration, more international law and regulations, more wars and more immigration are bringing the Pax Americana to its knees. The only politician on the world stage who appreciates this is Donald Trump." So says M. Wig-Wag.
Note to W-w: "The West" doesn't have a foreign policy, because it is not a unity, but an agglomeration of developed nations which are (mostly) democracies. Our separate and individual foreign policies do have segments that overlap, like a Venn diagram.
As for your ridiculous allegation that "more international integration", etc., is eroding the Pax Americana (and I am not clear what you think that is), I would say that a good portion of the PA is exactly that: international integration and cooperation. The strength of one is less than the strength of many - that is the organizing principle behind the formation of the EU. Did you ever travel through Europe in the pre-EU days, W-W? Every border crossing meant more bureaucracy, passport and visa-stamping and converting money - dollars for drachma, drachma for Lira, Lira for Deutschmarks, etc with the Cambio taking a cut every time. Contract that with travel on the Continent nowadays, and then think about the flow of goods and services over the nearly invisible borders, and ask yourself, is this not more convenient, by which I mean efficient, by which I mean less costly in time and money. That is an example of international integration, into a common set of rules and largely a common European currency.
As for your prognostications about Ukraine...Donny-Boy apparently wants the publicity hosting a peace-talk summit would give him -- he already had a flunky nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. He apparently figures Zelensky and Putin would both agree to a deal, which only he, Donald J Trump, is willing to offer them: forget about the half-million casualties and each give up some territory and promise to play nice together. Maybe he'll generously throw in a nice new golf-course somewhere.
Never mind entitlement, just ignorance. Ferguson tweeted that article out too; here he is demonstrating that he either doesn't understand what "soft budget constraint" means or is unaware that most businesses in the US today are not state-owned: https://x.com/nfergus/status/1803112144289865858
Sigh, he wrote a couple of good books about money way back...
Over the last few days, it has become clear that a cabal of advisers in the White House engaged in a conspiracy to hide the truth about President Biden’s accelerating mental and physical decline. It has also become clear that many highly placed Democrats knew that truth, but parroted the White House’s talking points or just kept silent. Ditto concerning many members of the media.
None of this surprised me. I always thought that the facts were widely known. In a town like Washington DC, explosive secrets like that don’t keep. Inevitably, the truth seeps out. So what we have here is a political scandal the size of Godzilla. The self-proclaimed dauntless defenders of “our democracy” were conspiring to undermine democratic accountability by hiding the fact that President Biden has lost his marbles.
The corruption revealed in this instance is a case study in the rise and resilience of Donald Trump. True, he tells many lies. But did Trump really lie when he charged that the system is rigged? No, he didn’t, and this scandal is proof that he didn’t. You can say that Trump’s wrong about NATO, and Ukraine, and trade, and lots of other things, and you’d get no argument from me. But he isn’t wrong when he denounces the corruption of the political establishment—as we see.
This is where we've gotten to when spin-doctoring has been normalized for so long. So bitter the irony, that for so long the conspiratorial rabbit-hole pitch has been "the government is gaslighting you".... I don't even need to finish the sentence.
"Obama droned an America citizen..." Context - this was the jihadist guy, right? A counter-terrorism strike on a terrorist who was a US citizen. I recall it was somewhat controversial at the time, but that was probably because the whole idea of "drone strikes" seemed very dystopian sci-fi stuff, and people had qualms about "assassination by remote control." I realize you are making a point about implied immunity, but are you suggesting that Obama should have been put on trial for this?
"We have to choose between an intelligent sociopath and an angry, senile man." This would be more compelling if the "intelligent sociopath" were on the ballot and they weren't both angry and senile.
Trump too is showing clear signs of dementia. In fact, we'd be talking of nothing else had Biden's debate performance been in the ballpark of normalcy. Trump, too, has markedly declined in the past four years, and whereas Biden is showing signs of a neurological disease, Trump is showing signs of classical dementia. Listen to him speak. Don't be distracted by his appearance of greater vitality. Notice the way he mistakes words, loses his train of thought, confuses Biden with Obama (eight separate times, and no, it wasn't a joke), Pelosi with Nikki Haley. Especially notice how much trouble he has during long rallies held in the evening. Look for phonemic paraphasia: swapping parts of words for others that sound similar--"mishuz" for missile, for example. That's a sign of early dementia. (Biden doesn't do that: He slurs and stutters to the point of incomprehensibility, but there's no phonemic paraphasia. My guess is that Biden is experiencing Parkinson's-related cognitive impairment whereas Trump, like his father at the same age, is experiencing Alzheimer's or vascular dementia.)
The same media that hasn't been able to spot the problem with Biden's speech and affect is similarly unable to spot the problem with Trump's. (I don't know why this should be: are they not reporting it because they're terrified of losing access? Or do they really not see the problem? They edit out the incomprehensible parts and render what he's saying into something more cogent--you could see that when Time published the full transcript of their interview with him. They did it with Biden, too.)
But just like Biden, Trump has experienced a *stunning* decline in fluency from his earlier baseline. He has difficulty finishing thoughts--he even has difficulty finishing words. The way he repeats himself and uses filler words is typical of dementia. So is his confusion of generations. (For example, confusing his own father and grandfather.) He uses words incorrectly--that's called semantic aphasia. He didn't do this when he was young, not at all.
His narratives are incoherent. The word salad, the lack of connection between ideas ... he's losing his marbles, too. He had a better night than Biden, but check back in two years, because just like Biden, it's going downhill quickly.
What's more, he's begun living in a delusional world that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with his narcissistic fantasies, which are becoming more primitive and infantile. He wasn't lying on that debate stage. *He believes those things happened.*
Trump is cunning, yes, in the way many sociopaths are. Intelligent? Not at all. He never was and he certainly isn't now. There's a reason he doesn't read: He can't. He's barely literate. He can't process complex information. Everyone who tries to brief him has reported he gets bored and confused. They resorted to simplifying things to the level of a children's coloring book.
So our choice, right now, is between *two* angry, senile men, one of whom is *also* a stupid sociopath.
Despite storm clouds, I think we'll probably muddle through Godwilling. The thing I'm not that concerned about is another Trump presidency. He might fray things with America's friends a little, but he will likely stop her foes from being quite so bold. It won't be worse than another 4 years of Biden/Harris, and will almost certainly be better imo. Then maybe 4 years later we can have some better candidates again.
We're in deep shit and for all the reasons you so beautifully elucidate and likely more. Today, on the 4th -- I don't feel hopeful. Have we ever had such horrid choices for president? Not sure what we can do but the Dems had better get their act together. Somehow, some way...
I found yesterday extremely melancholy. Seeing all the patriotic images just made me feel deeply sad.
It is definitely one of the strangest times for our country. And difficult... somehow, we have to prevail.
"The 80s called, and want their foreign policy back."
Remember when Romney warned us about Russia? Even when the grown ups were in charge, there were no grown ups in charge. Obama went around the world apologizing for the US to whomever would listen, and let Putin walk in the Crimea. And telling the Russians to wait until after the election.
Where is our Thatcher, where is our Reagan, where is our John Paul II? We the people don't understand the grave danger the west is in. We need leaders who do understand, and have the guts to do something about it?
All over the world, Western democracies are led by mediocre people. No one of stature has arisen to face or even acknowledge the challenge of the autocratic crazies.
“There must be something wrong with the system.”
There is nothing wrong with the system. There is something wrong with us.
I subscribe to two Substacks, this one and Noah Smith's. I find them to be complementary: yours focuses on (geo)politics and Russia as adversary, Noah's on economics and China as adversary.
Today Noah posted his own "assessment of threats to the Republic", and I think it is a good counterpoint to this essay:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/assessing-the-threats-to-the-republic
Noah thinks Trump will be elected. That's not his preference and he thinks some bad things will happen, but also that it won't be "Republic-destroying". So he thinks America will muddle through domestically.
On the other hand, he thinks the China-Russia axis is a danger. He mentions the risk of war over Taiwan in the short term, but what he seems to be most concerned about, is that over the long term, they will expand their spheres of influence at the expense of America (and also at the expense of liberal democracy).
Hope you feel a little better, having gotten all of that out. :-) I was surprised you were able to hold it back for so long. Maybe you were preoccupied with the French and British elections, among your many other doings. I find myself in morose agreement with almost everything you vented.
Permit me a few minor observations; I wouldn't really call them quibbles.
Your bottom line re the dangers of nuclear proliferation seem to me to be spot on. However, if the US ever felt compelled to launch a nuclear strike at the DPRK (which I doubt), it wouldn't be traveling over Russia. It would surely be submarine launched at a relatively short range. I really think any attack on NK would be a conventional one. No point in hurting our friends in the South or annoying the Chinese to the point that they might want to respond in kind. One hopes we learned some lessons from the events of November 1950.
I was glad to see you highlight the rise of anti-Semitism and see in it a breakdown of the intellectual and moral environment. I have never understood it. Always supported Israel, but was never a Zionist, thinking the US to be the real Promised Land. Now the scales have fallen from my eyes, or rather, been knocked off by the domestic reaction to the appalling events of 7 Oct 23. I thought Charlottesville to be an aberration. I was wrong.
The Supreme Court has run amuck and is in dire need of reform. That cannot happen (under the old rules) unless the Democratic Party retains or gains control of the Presidency, Senate, and House. I didn't see that happening even under the best of circumstances, and now I think it's totally beyond reach. Maybe a newly-empowered Democratic President could impose a code of ethics on the Court unilaterally. And have the Executive Branch impeach any justice who violated it. The King has so decreed. No need for judicial review.
I share your anger at the Democratic Party's and Biden Administration's failures to promote, visibly and publicly, the successes of younger members of the party and administration. What appears to be a toxic combination of self-delusion, hubris, and vanity means that there is now no viable Democratic alternative to a visibly impaired President. The experiences of 1968 are all too relevant here. To change candidates at this late stage of the game would make the impending disaster even worse, up and down the ticket. I'm furious that we have left our country in this position.
And our democracy's domestic enemies are indeed well-organized, well-financed and utterly determined to bring democracy down. The blueprint for a Christofascist takeover (not a theocratic one. Only one religion counts) of the U.S. government has been made public in Project 2025. Today's nauseating gloating by the Kevin Roberts Creature hammers that point home. BTW, thank you for making me learn a new word - "gleichschaltung." That is indeed what we see underway here.
Kudos for the Edith Wilson reference.
And maybe a little harsh on Jen Rubin.
Otherwise, yes, to hell with all of them. Especially with the feckless holders of great power who feared to use that power when they had the chance. Grrrrr. OK, now I've let it out, but I don't feel better.
Just for the record, during the year before Trump took office, tension concerning the North Korean nuclear threat was so great that when the early warning sirens in Hawaii accidentally went off, a significant number of Hawaiians believe the attach was real.
Trumps personal diplomacy with Kim, no matter how stomach churning, did in fact significantly reduce the tension. The threat of launch from the North was greatly reduced.
Under Biden’s leadership, the tensions have ratcheted back up. A likely scenario if Trump is elected is that he will return to his successful strategy and again diffuse the Korean situation.
There are significant unknowns about how his policies will play out around the world if he returns to office, but it would be difficult achieve worse results than those experienced the last 3 years.
The decision on immunity only ratifies what was the assumed understanding and practice for 200 years. The president can only be held accountable for official acts by the voters and by impeachment, not through state or federal prosecution.
BTW, the military and law enforcement officers are trained not to obey orders they consider unlawful. A presidential order to assassinate or imprison political opponents or media people without judicial process would not survive its journey through the chain of command.
Biden and the people around him—through vanity, power-lust, self-delusion, or outright mendacity—have put America and the world in unspeakable danger.” (Claire Berlinski)
This isn’t quite right. Biden may be complicit but ultimately the fault isn’t mostly his. It’s the neoconservatives, the liberal internationalists and the Atlanticists, globalists all, who are responsible for squandering the strength of the West. I’m sorry to say, Claire, that it’s people who believe what you believe who have emasculated the liberal world and empowered our enemies.
It was the most enthusiastic advocates of the Pax Americana who mistakenly believed that the United States and its feckless European and Japanese allies were so remarkably powerful that they they could take on all comers and force all adversaries to relent. That’s what they thought when they prosecuted two wars in Iraq and one decades-long conflict in Afghanistan. Not only did we lose all of those wars but we wasted trillions of dollars. Had those trillions of dollars been more wisely deployed, perhaps the West would be less weak than it is now.
It was those same Uber-liberals who were so enamored with the free-flow of people and capital that they threw restraint to the wind and happily imported tens of millions of immigrants while at the same time exporting a significant portion our industrial base to third world countries, some of which (like China) are our enemies. It was the globalist elites in the United States who did that. The culprits are the intellectuals, the centralizers and the crowd who worshipped at the alter of increasing global integration.
It’s startling, Claire, that you don’t understand why citizens in the United States, France, Italy, the Netherlands and other Western nations reject expending the resources necessary to underwrite the Pax Americana. Has it occurred to you that this rejection stems from the fact that people who support the policies that you support, have wasted trillions of tax dollars on wars that have been lost while watching immigrants crater their wages and, in the case of Western Europe, insult and sometimes eviscerate their culture?
And then there’s Ukraine; by far the biggest mistake of all; it’s the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Some of your loyal readers have been around long enough to remember all the gloating that Ukraine supporters did at the beginning of the War. They assured us that Russia was too militarily, economically and financially weak to prevail. They were terribly wrong. This same crowd assured us that Western intentions were purely noble. They were partly right; Putin’s invasion was monstrous. What Biden and his credulous European lackeys failed to admit was that the war in Ukraine was a proxy war, designed in part to cut Russia down to size. That’s why Biden squelched all attempts to negotiate an accommodation early on. You opposed those efforts, Claire. Are you willing to admit now that it would be better today, if those efforts had been given a chance?
Like the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the calamities of unimpeded immigration and free trade, the tragedy in Ukraine has poisoned the chalice of citizen’s support for the Pax Americana. It didn’t have to be this way, but the globalists never knew when to stop. Their arrogance was so luminescent that they thought the West could never lose.
The Russian alliance with China, North Korea and Iran is stronger than ever. Those powers, at least for now, are ascendent. It’s the mistakes of globalist leaders that have strengthened our enemies; the biggest mistake of all was not nipping the Ukraine imbroglio in the bud while there was still a chance. But for the war in Ukraine, the alliance between Russia, China, North Korea and Iran would not be a budding colossus.
Nials Ferguson has two essays up at the Free Press that are well-worth reading (they’re not free). He makes a claim that is as shocking as it is depressing. He describes in some detail how the United States looks remarkably like the Soviet Union in the period immediately before its collapse. It didn’t have to be this way if only our globalist rulers had exercised a modicum of modesty. Sadly it was arrogance they had in abundance, not humility.
Trump-Derangement Syndrome has also played a major role in the collapse of the Pax Americana. After all, there was no immigration crisis when Trump was President, or at the very least, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now.
However imperfectly, Trump tried to reinvigorate the American industrial base after years of neglect by the globalist cadres.
Trump realized that an uninterrupted series of wars in places Americans didn’t care about sapped American strength instead of enhancing it.
Trump understood that Europe’s failure to devote adequate resources to the common defense was disastrous; something the Europeans only figured out as they watched Ukraine get clobbered.
Trump begged our European allies to wean themselves off of Russian hydrocarbons, something Europe only began to do after bombs started dropping on Kyiv.
Trump understood what Biden never did (and you don’t either, Claire); husbanding American strength for things that really matter is a far wiser strategy than squandering American strength on peripheral concerns. He also understood what Biden never did; antagonizing Russia for no reason was a bad strategic bet.
Biden can’t fix Ukraine, Claire. None of his potential Democratic replacements can either. Neither can any other Western leader. Support for the Ukrainian war is plummeting in Europe and the United States.
Given the current reality, the man most likely to help Ukraine achieve a modestly successful outcome is none other than Donald Trump. It won’t be perfect but it will be far better than anything delivered by a Democratic President. You see, Trump doesn’t like to lose. All his potential Democratic opponents (and establishment Republicans) ever do is lose.
Wig-Wag, the essay you just posted cries out for a point by point response explaining where you went off the rails. I am not spending time with that tonight: I will just say that among the many things you 've got absolutely wrong is "husbanding American strength for things that really matter is a far wiser strategy than...(fighting about peripheral concerns)...antagonizing Russia for no reason was a bad strategic bet." You then go on to say, "Biden can't fix Ukraine," which is may well be true, but is absolutely no excuse for staying quiescent in response to Russian aggression.
The madness of Vlad Putin threatens all of Europe, in my opinion. Doing nothing that would "antagonize Russia" would be disastrous: we tried that when Putin's little Green Men invaded Crimea, and it made Russia more of a threat. Giving them Ukraine on a silver platter by failing to assist in its defense would be far worse. You complain about the trillions of dollars spent on wars, but you would bo down to dictators ... to save up for what? An even bigger Bavovna when Putin (or Xi, Kim or the mullahs) decide to tweak the tiger's tail by gobbling up a country that you consider more important to US interests?
You compound the impression that you are talking through your hat when you assert that Donald Trump -- yes, TRUMP - "also understood what Biden never did" about Russia. TRUMP? Trump understands ONLY what serves his personal brand and his bank account. Any sound policy decisions he makes are either at the behest of advisors or, as I suspect, are just random good luck. If you believe that criticism of DJT's judgement is somehow 'deranged', I would suggest you re-read the guy's tweets.
R Hodson, much like Claire, you’re whistling past the graveyard. She’s apoplectic that Biden hasn’t announced that he’s pulling out of the race because of whatever neurological infirmity he’s suffering from, but if he is indeed ill with dementia or Parkinson’s or something else, who’s been running American foreign policy for the past several months?
Of course it’s been Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan. Whatever specific differences Claire has with them, their policy inclinations fall well within the mainstream uniparty foreign policy consensus. If Biden pulls out and Harris, Newsom or Whitmer is nominated instead, whoever they select as foreign policy advisors will advocate for precisely the same failed policies that have brought us to this disastrous position in the first place.
Early on in the primary process, Claire extolled the virtues of Chris Christie and Nicki Halley. If either of them had defeated Trump for the GOP nomination, the Secretary of State and NSC Chief they would have selected would have adopted policies remarkably similar to the policies of their Democratic adversaries. Sure there would have been some differences but those differences would have been rounding errors.
Why is the Pax Americana literally collapsing before our eyes? Here’s a wake up call for you; it didn’t start with Biden’s dementia. The blame goes to all of the American Presidents who’ve held office in the 21st Century with one exception, Donald Trump.
George W. Bush and Condi Rice got the ball rolling in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama and John Kerry continued the long march to calamitous failure with their obsession with putting climate change at the center of our foreign policy. When President Biden bungled U.S. into the Ukraine conflict he didn’t do it because he was senile. He did it because like most of the Democrat and Republican Presidents who preceded him, he fervently believed in the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. The credo for that consensus is shoot first, ask questions later. The prevailing ideology of that consensus is a nostalgia and even a reverence for the good old days of the Cold War.
Trump is no genius and he’s certainly no messiah but he understood something that you and Claire don’t. He realized that the bipartisan foreign policy consensus operative since the end of the Cold War had passed its use by date. He realized that the United States had been profoundly weakened by the deindustrialization which resulted from his predecessors policies. He realized that the political comity necessary to sustain an assertive foreign policy had been weakened by massive immigration. Most importantly he realized that the United States was much weaker than it had been because it could no longer depend on its European and Japanese allies who had spent decades spending next to nothing on defense.
Trump understood that the status quo that Claire yearns for no longer worked and that a new approach was desperately needed. That new approach required a reset in America’s relationship with Europe, a reset with the nations in the Middle East and, most importantly, a reset with Russia. Trump’s passion for trying a new approach made Uniparty apparatchiks apoplectic. It made Claire apoplectic. When Trump was President they excoriated him at every opportunity; they continue to do so. Trump Derangement Syndrome has proven to be an even more serious ailment than Biden’s dementia.
The irony is that the collapse of the Pax Americana began on the watch of Trump’s predecessors in office. It temporarily abated when he was President and it reached a crescendo during Biden’s presidency.
The problem R Hodson is not that Biden is senile. The problem is that West’s foreign policy ideology is senile. More international integration, more international law and regulations, more wars and more immigration are bringing the Pax Americana to its knees. The only politician on the world stage who appreciates this is Donald Trump.
As for Claire, what she doesn’t realize is that the only hope that Ukraine has left is Donald Trump. If a Democrat is elected as our next President, the increasingly unstable status quo will prevail and Russia will bleed Ukraine to death. It’s obvious that all the kings horses and all the kings men can’t put Ukraine back together again, at least if that means the recovery of Crimea.
Unlike Biden or all of the other possible Democratic nominees, Trump hates losing. Democrats and establishment Republicans have proven that all they know how to do is lose. Sadly, their losses have been colossal; they destroyed the Pax Americana.
Maybe, just maybe, Trump can rescue Ukraine and start the slow and painful process of revivifying the Pax Americana. . One thing’s for sure; nobody else can.
I think your ideology is out of whack with reality, W-W. Trump can not and will not "rescue Ukraine." Sell it out, yes.
You keep talking about the Pax Americana: what do you think that consists of?
You say, " The problem is that West’s foreign policy ideology is senile. More international integration, more international law and regulations, more wars and more immigration are bringing the Pax Americana to its knees. The only politician on the world stage who appreciates this is Donald Trump." So says M. Wig-Wag.
Note to W-w: "The West" doesn't have a foreign policy, because it is not a unity, but an agglomeration of developed nations which are (mostly) democracies. Our separate and individual foreign policies do have segments that overlap, like a Venn diagram.
As for your ridiculous allegation that "more international integration", etc., is eroding the Pax Americana (and I am not clear what you think that is), I would say that a good portion of the PA is exactly that: international integration and cooperation. The strength of one is less than the strength of many - that is the organizing principle behind the formation of the EU. Did you ever travel through Europe in the pre-EU days, W-W? Every border crossing meant more bureaucracy, passport and visa-stamping and converting money - dollars for drachma, drachma for Lira, Lira for Deutschmarks, etc with the Cambio taking a cut every time. Contract that with travel on the Continent nowadays, and then think about the flow of goods and services over the nearly invisible borders, and ask yourself, is this not more convenient, by which I mean efficient, by which I mean less costly in time and money. That is an example of international integration, into a common set of rules and largely a common European currency.
As for your prognostications about Ukraine...Donny-Boy apparently wants the publicity hosting a peace-talk summit would give him -- he already had a flunky nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. He apparently figures Zelensky and Putin would both agree to a deal, which only he, Donald J Trump, is willing to offer them: forget about the half-million casualties and each give up some territory and promise to play nice together. Maybe he'll generously throw in a nice new golf-course somewhere.
Get real, Wig-Wag.
This may be the most insightful and depressing essay you read this year.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/were-all-soviets-now?r=dq3ii&utm_medium=ios
The surreal level of entitlement and delusion to compare the USA to the Soviet Union is mind-blowing
These inane attitudes are where I place much of the blame for the demise of Western liberality
Never mind entitlement, just ignorance. Ferguson tweeted that article out too; here he is demonstrating that he either doesn't understand what "soft budget constraint" means or is unaware that most businesses in the US today are not state-owned: https://x.com/nfergus/status/1803112144289865858
Sigh, he wrote a couple of good books about money way back...
Missed this the first time: "while his entire entourage insists he’s sharp as a fiddle and fit as a tack" 😂
More than a psychopath, Trump is a textbook case of the Dark Tetrad.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dark-tetrad
Yes he is.
Over the last few days, it has become clear that a cabal of advisers in the White House engaged in a conspiracy to hide the truth about President Biden’s accelerating mental and physical decline. It has also become clear that many highly placed Democrats knew that truth, but parroted the White House’s talking points or just kept silent. Ditto concerning many members of the media.
None of this surprised me. I always thought that the facts were widely known. In a town like Washington DC, explosive secrets like that don’t keep. Inevitably, the truth seeps out. So what we have here is a political scandal the size of Godzilla. The self-proclaimed dauntless defenders of “our democracy” were conspiring to undermine democratic accountability by hiding the fact that President Biden has lost his marbles.
The corruption revealed in this instance is a case study in the rise and resilience of Donald Trump. True, he tells many lies. But did Trump really lie when he charged that the system is rigged? No, he didn’t, and this scandal is proof that he didn’t. You can say that Trump’s wrong about NATO, and Ukraine, and trade, and lots of other things, and you’d get no argument from me. But he isn’t wrong when he denounces the corruption of the political establishment—as we see.
This is where we've gotten to when spin-doctoring has been normalized for so long. So bitter the irony, that for so long the conspiratorial rabbit-hole pitch has been "the government is gaslighting you".... I don't even need to finish the sentence.
Really excellent article marred by Claire's TDS.
Claire essentially described Trump as a sociopath.
Probably right.
But she claims that Trump is far worse than Biden, a man Claire admits is given to fits of rage.
We have to choose between an intelligent sociopath and an angry, senile man.
Claire, you tell me which one is more likely to have a nuclear war.
The SCOTUS comments were pure garbage.
We already have presidential immunity.
I saw very few lefties calling for an Obama trial after he droned an American citizen.
Claire, your moral outrage is more like political maneuvering.
Carping aside, you are right. We are moving closer to war.
But never fear.
The US military is led by the most politically adept politicians that a turf fighting environment can produce.
"Obama droned an America citizen..." Context - this was the jihadist guy, right? A counter-terrorism strike on a terrorist who was a US citizen. I recall it was somewhat controversial at the time, but that was probably because the whole idea of "drone strikes" seemed very dystopian sci-fi stuff, and people had qualms about "assassination by remote control." I realize you are making a point about implied immunity, but are you suggesting that Obama should have been put on trial for this?
Yes.
Obama killed an American citizen in cold blood.
Executed him without due process.
If you are ok with that, where do you draw the line?
And having opened that door, do you think that you can trust the government (remember Pompeo's kill list)?
"We have to choose between an intelligent sociopath and an angry, senile man." This would be more compelling if the "intelligent sociopath" were on the ballot and they weren't both angry and senile.
Trump too is showing clear signs of dementia. In fact, we'd be talking of nothing else had Biden's debate performance been in the ballpark of normalcy. Trump, too, has markedly declined in the past four years, and whereas Biden is showing signs of a neurological disease, Trump is showing signs of classical dementia. Listen to him speak. Don't be distracted by his appearance of greater vitality. Notice the way he mistakes words, loses his train of thought, confuses Biden with Obama (eight separate times, and no, it wasn't a joke), Pelosi with Nikki Haley. Especially notice how much trouble he has during long rallies held in the evening. Look for phonemic paraphasia: swapping parts of words for others that sound similar--"mishuz" for missile, for example. That's a sign of early dementia. (Biden doesn't do that: He slurs and stutters to the point of incomprehensibility, but there's no phonemic paraphasia. My guess is that Biden is experiencing Parkinson's-related cognitive impairment whereas Trump, like his father at the same age, is experiencing Alzheimer's or vascular dementia.)
The same media that hasn't been able to spot the problem with Biden's speech and affect is similarly unable to spot the problem with Trump's. (I don't know why this should be: are they not reporting it because they're terrified of losing access? Or do they really not see the problem? They edit out the incomprehensible parts and render what he's saying into something more cogent--you could see that when Time published the full transcript of their interview with him. They did it with Biden, too.)
But just like Biden, Trump has experienced a *stunning* decline in fluency from his earlier baseline. He has difficulty finishing thoughts--he even has difficulty finishing words. The way he repeats himself and uses filler words is typical of dementia. So is his confusion of generations. (For example, confusing his own father and grandfather.) He uses words incorrectly--that's called semantic aphasia. He didn't do this when he was young, not at all.
His narratives are incoherent. The word salad, the lack of connection between ideas ... he's losing his marbles, too. He had a better night than Biden, but check back in two years, because just like Biden, it's going downhill quickly.
What's more, he's begun living in a delusional world that has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with his narcissistic fantasies, which are becoming more primitive and infantile. He wasn't lying on that debate stage. *He believes those things happened.*
Trump is cunning, yes, in the way many sociopaths are. Intelligent? Not at all. He never was and he certainly isn't now. There's a reason he doesn't read: He can't. He's barely literate. He can't process complex information. Everyone who tries to brief him has reported he gets bored and confused. They resorted to simplifying things to the level of a children's coloring book.
So our choice, right now, is between *two* angry, senile men, one of whom is *also* a stupid sociopath.
Which is why I'm so furious.
OK Claire.
You are right.
Trump is slipping fast.
I made the typical Dem mistake; I focused on the opposition instead of analyzing the facts.
We are so f--ked.
Biden today, Biden or Trump tomorrow.
Moving to Chechnya is starting to look like an attractive option.
I'm thinking southern hemisphere. Way, *way* south. Tip of the southern cone.
Joining the tech bros in NZ? Wine is good, weather less so.
I'd rather perish in a nuclear war than spend the rest of my life trapped in New Zealand with the tech bros.
Well argued.
I will follow up.
« The same law prohibits wearing sunglasses, or wearing a white dress for a wedding. » but Kim would look great in a white dress 😂😂
Sorry - I know this is all serious but it was the first thing I thought of. Your entire hell rant really resonates. Where are all the grown ups?!?
Your second paragraph reminded me of this, which seems appropriate for Claire's newsletter today:
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
(The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,
Death and despair flame about me!)
(These are the opening lines of the Queen of the Night's aria from Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute.")
Claire as Queen of the Night. I can see it.