136 Comments
founding
Oct 28Liked by Claire Berlinski

This seems an appropriate place to quote Bill Kristol... in fact, his new commentary is sufficiently brief that rather that quote snippets I will just copy&paste it in its entirety.

Their Ugliest Foot Forward

by William Kristol

It was quite the hate fest the Trump campaign put on last night at Madison Square Garden.

Some “comedian,” selected and vetted by the Trump campaign, warmed up the crowd: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” Just to make sure people didn’t miss the point, he also crudely mocked Latino Americans in general, and “joked” about black Americans carving watermelons instead of pumpkins this Halloween.

Some talk radio guy—selected and vetted by the Trump campaign—called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a bitch” and Democrats “a bunch of degenerates. Lowlifes. Jew-haters and lowlifes. Every one of ‘em.”

Some man grasping and waving a cross screamed from the stage: “Kamala Harris is the devil! She is the Antichrist!” (Again: This was a speaker selected and vetted by the Trump campaign.)

Not to be outdone by these nobodies, top Trump aide Stephen Miller worked himself up into a pitch of nativist frenzy: “America is for Americans and Americans only.” (What a minor nation in world history we would have been had this been our policy for the last couple of centuries! Somewhere backstage, Elon Musk and Melania Trump waited for their turn to speak.)

In addition, Miller said of the assassination attempt against Trump: “They also tried to take his life.” The unspecified “they”: always a favorite of demagogic conspiracists. Miller wasn’t the only speaker to adopt this construct.

Leading Trumpist thinker Tucker Carlson weighed in later, explaining there was no way “a Samoan Malaysian low-IQ” candidate like Kamala Harris could win 85 million votes. (That’s about the number of votes Harris is likely to get, which—in the event she wins—Carlson and the Trump campaign will spend the next two months insisting was impossible as they try to overturn the results.)

Trump himself didn’t shy away from demagogic incitement, especially as you’d expect against dark-skinned immigrants. “A lot of people are coming from the Congo prisons,” he declared on stage. But he was also happy to attack Americans of any color or national origin who oppose his campaign: “They are indeed the enemy from within,” and “the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth.”

This was the grand finale of the Trump campaign, personally insisted upon by him, paid for and produced by his campaign. This wasn’t Trump appearing at an event sponsored by a wacky local party or a goofy affiliated group, where the crazed speakers were locally produced farm-to-table types. This was 100 percent Grade-A Trumpism. _This is what they wanted people to see._

Last night, at Madison Square Garden, they presented to us Donald Trump’s vision for America.

But Madison Square Garden also evokes another vision for America. On May 8, 1970, Knicks center Willis Reed, suffering from a torn thigh muscle and not expected to be able to play in the NBA championship series’ decisive seventh game, hobbled onto the court as his teammates warmed up. Reed started the game, made the Knicks’ first two field goals, and inspired the crowd and his teammates, who proceeded to defeat the Lakers and secure the underdog Knicks the championship.

Willis Reed was a black man from Louisiana who’d attended Grambling, the famed historically black college. His teammates included Bill Bradley, a Princeton and Oxford-educated Midwestern banker’s son; Dave DeBusschere, a Catholic kid from Detroit; and Walt Frazier, who learned basketball on a dirt playground at his all-black segregated Atlanta school. The Knicks coach was Red Holzman, born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1920, the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania and Russia. That America is the America some of us see when we think of Madison Square Garden.

It is therefore tempting to avert our eyes from the ugly spectacle that was imposed on us at the Garden last night. But looking away won’t cut it. The only way to get beyond Trumpism is to defeat it.

Expand full comment
Oct 24Liked by Claire Berlinski

Not a US citizen, but if I were, I would door-knock, phone-bank and vote for Harris. The choice is a binary one, and Trump is unacceptable in every way. I’m dismayed to read the comments of self-described single-issue voters who defend their vote for Trump on the basis of their hatred of “woke” politics (or is it really aesthetics?), or their fear for the fate of Israel, or their concern about immigration, or what have you.

The Democratic Party, for all its weaknesses, promotes and works toward a liberal, open and inclusive world, one in which the maximum number of people can actualize their potential within a rules-based order—the only way to achieve peace and prosperity. I apologize if that sounds pat, like propaganda—it’s shorthand, but I doubt anyone wants to read a 3000 word essay in the comment section.

I am more hawkish with respect to foreign policy than the typical left of center voter—including in my own country—and I’m concerned that dovish forces might predominate in a Harris administration, extending the conflict in the Middle East, although in fairness I don’t recall any American administration having a magic wand on that front. On the other hand, the world is more likely to survive a few years of wishful American foreign policy than the stupid, bellicose, self-serving, isolationist, anti-institutionalist, America-first, war-criminal cheerleading actions promised by Trump and his band of weirdos, enablers and sociopaths. Strong words, yes, but tell me Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Kash Patel et al are quality people.

The US had four years of Trump. As I recall they were ugly years marked by chaos, cruelty, nepotism, destructiveness and mass death. Yes, mass death. Remember Covid? Oh and rank stupidity. Oops, I almost forgot paranoia and lies.

And chief among the sociopaths and criminals was Trump himself. It would be madness, a tragic, unforgivable self-inflicted wound, to make him President again.

Expand full comment

I don't really care about the antisemites running wild in the universities.

Our universities are (mostly) a lost cause and Jews have supported the left and the bigots for so long that I feel almost a sense of schadenfreude. These antisemitic demonstrations are a natural result of both lefty policies and lefty indulgences.

Time for Jews to get a better class of friends.

I support Trump because of the lawlessness of the left.

Look at the lawfare against Trump, Musk, the 1/6ers; the manipulations to protect Hunter; the plans to stack SCOTUS and eliminate the electoral college; but most of all the assaults on the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendments.

A vote for Kamela is a vote to magnify the differences between the protected and the unprotected.

I read the emotional comments from lefties about Trump scheming to become a dictator.

BS.

Look what your side is doing.

Claire took exception to my statement that The CG is a lefty site.

The fact that only 13% of the readership voted for Trump (in a roughly 52/48% election) suggests that this site is strongly lefty.

The degree of TDS in the comments is easy confirmation of the lefty bias.

Expand full comment
Oct 23Liked by Claire Berlinski

Claire, re fascism, Trump, and your call to comment here rather than on cross posts.

In my view it is more important to focus on how America would look under Trump than to split hairs on definitions of fascism. I am looking at the domestic scene here because you do such a sterling job on the geopolitical aspects.

Despite his bombastic public persona, the former insider who has predicted Trump's actions most precisely is Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen. He was the first to say, in his 2018 Congressional testimony, that Trump would not accede to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost in 2020. So let us pay attention to his other major prediction: that he will do to America's oligarchs something like what MBS did to his fellow Saudi princes -- lock them in a hotel until they agreed to give up most of their property. Or, Trump will do to US businesspeople what Putin has done to his oligarchs, and make plain that they hold their wealth at his sufferance and that in fact all wealth actually belongs to Trump.

Also note that in Project 2025 Trump proposes to pay in part for his income tax cuts for high bracket taxpayers by cutting funds available to Social Security, which is not exactly generous even now, especially when those without big wealth pay for Medicare from Social Security payments. In other words, no one but his closest and most obsequious cronies will be spared.

Moreover under Putin, the man Trump most admires, Russia is a poor country with a low per capita income, because Putin has systematically looted the place and its abundant natural resources, rather than build a growth economy. If Trump is elected, expect this.

With Project 2025 in place and a pliant Supreme Court there will be no stopping Trump. Project 2025 would also destroy Government agencies run by long serving experts which are the envy of the rest of the world, from the National Weather Service to the Departments of Energy, Agriculture and so on. Michael Lewis covers this ground in "The Fifth Risk."

And then what is left of the once independent press will either go out of business or look like Pravda. I don't know if he will logistically be able to deport all the immigrants he promises to deport but you can bet that his political rivals will go to jail, exile, or be put to death.

I don't care what you call Trump but It's time we took our blinders off and actually looked at the future he wants to create.

Expand full comment

Before I move on, one last note from 25 years ago from the late Jude Wanniski's Polyconomics Forum. "Jude: The benign use of the term fascist locates it amid the early 20th century "syndicalists," which was an offshoot of "democratic" elitist rule, It is Plato moving toward an extreme. Democratic means the system will enable the lowest of the low to get to the top in his/her lifetime, if they are meritorious. Syndicalists believed that if the best and the brightest joined intellectual and political forces in a "syndicate," they could make greater achievements than if they had to slow down for the unwashed masses. The term "fascist" comes from the symbol of twigs of wood bound together, which suggests strength in unity. The twigs represent government, business and labor in their most elite forms.

Fascism surfaced first in Italy with Mussolini, who made the trains run on time — although I pointed out in my book, The Way The World Works, that he had a fabulous finance minister named Alberto de Stefani, a junior Alexander Hamilton. The economy boomed because of the supply-side tax and monetary policies of de Stefani, but the fascists in other countries took credit. The forces that came together behind the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1929-30 were of course those representing Big Government/Big Business/and Big Labor. The American Federation of Labor was an enthusiastic supporter as was the major industrial combination. To this day, the elites here refuse to recognize what they did to put the world on the track to Depression and WWII. They instead argue that the masses of people speculated unwisely on Wall Street and produced the bubble that burst. Ah, if only we had a stronger government. The New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was explicitly designed on the Mussolini pattern, on the theory that the market system had failed and the national government had to become active in getting the economy under control. Instead of socializing industry, government would regulate it, subsidize it, help it, protect it. The New Deal philosophy carried through the Democratic Party up to its nomination of Hubert Humphrey in 1968. It then moved left with the nominations of George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Michael Dukakis in 1988. The Clinton election of 1992 moved the party back toward the philosophy of the New Deal, explicitly favoring Big Business and Big Labor in partnership with an activist government. We can say with some assurance that this helps explain the high performance rating that helped save Clinton from conviction in his Senate impeachment trial.

Where does Al Hunt of the WSJournal fit into this scheme of things? Indeed, he fits more in the New Deal mode which can be loosely said to fit into the fascist category, which is right of center. Because each of the Axis powers in WWII were "fascist" in organization and philosophy, the term has taken on a far more extreme connotation than when it was originally introduced. Hunt is not a "liberal," and even might protest if he were called one. He would insist he could not be pigeonholed, but of course everyone can, and I've always thought of Albert as a benign fascist. At The Wall Street Journal during the past quarter century, he did everything he could to block the populist conservatives associated with Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, and the supply-siders. He will go to his grave, for example, certain that the Clinton tax increase of 1993 is responsible for the budget surplus we are now enjoying. And that the supply-side tax cuts under Reagan were ill-considered.

At the WSJ l editorial page, Robert L. Bartley has had a much more populist footing. Bartley was instrumental in providing the intellectual support for "Reaganomics," which is really a personalized supply-side policy mechanism. This is why we have seen for the last two decades a tension between the editorial page and the Washington bureau, where Hunt resides. Because Bartley does hang out with Big Business and the political elites, he has flirted with them too, but for the most part has held on to his populist roots. Watch and see as the struggle continues into the new millennium."

Expand full comment

All comments humbly posted with what I hope is the indulgence of "Claire of Vientiane."

Expand full comment

Morrow- "Mr. Trump and his followers, believe it or not, are essentially antifascists: They want the state to stand aside, to impose the least possible interference and allow market forces and entrepreneurial energies to work. Freedom isn’t fascism. Mr. Biden and his vast tribe are essentially enemies of freedom, although most of them haven’t thought the matter through. Freedom, the essential American value, isn’t on their minds. They desire maximum—that is, total—state or party control of all aspects of American life, including what people say and think. Seventy-four years after George Orwell wrote “1984,” such control (by way of surveillance cameras, social-media companies and the Internal Revenue Service, now to be shockingly augmented by 87,000 new employees) is entirely feasible. The left yearns for power and authoritarian order. It is Faust’s bargain; freedom is forfeit.

Mr. Trump, the canniest showman in the White House since Franklin D. Roosevelt, introduced into 21st-century politics what seemed to be new idioms of hatred, a freestyle candor of the id. Doing so, he provoked his enemies—and finally Mr. Biden—to respond in kind: a big mistake. In the early 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy was loose in the land, and roughly half the country supported his anticommunist inquisition, President Eisenhower wisely decided, “I will not get into the gutter with this guy.” It took a while for McCarthy to implode.

When Mr. Biden spoke in Philadelphia the other night, he might have been thinking of FDR’s speech at Madison Square Garden on the night of Oct. 31, 1936, at the end of his presidential campaign against Alf Landon—and, by the way, three months before he tried to pack the Supreme Court. That night, Roosevelt boasted that his enemies (Republicans, plutocrats, et al.) “are unanimous in their hate for me.” With a flourish, he added, “I welcome their hatred!”

Americans, lamenting the divisions of 2022 and, some of them, entertaining fantasies of a new civil war, should refresh their historical memories. The country has been bitterly divided against itself any number of times. The hatreds and convulsions of the 1930s (the era of Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin and the Silver Shirts, of homegrown tribes of Trotskyists and Stalinists) culminated in the ferocious battle between isolationists and internationalists that lasted until the Sunday morning of Pearl Harbor.

The motif of political hatred returned to America almost as soon as World War II ended. The Alger Hiss case of 1948 warmed up the enmities, and McCarthy blew on the coals and turned half of the country against the other half. Such hatred seems cyclical. The 1960s (assassinations, civil rights battles, urban riots, the Vietnam War) had Americans at one another’s throats again. Those eruptions of political rage occurred in the years when the baby boomers and Joe Biden (who was a few years older) came of age and acquired their idea of what America is all about.

That night in 1936, Roosevelt, warming to the language of hatred, suggested that his enemies should get out of the country: “Let them emigrate and try their lot under some foreign flag.” Mr. Biden—who, as he spoke in Philadelphia, was bathed in a lurid red light that seemed, as it were, ineptly theological—was content to cast his foes into outer darkness." For those who can't access, I hope that these excerpts promote in the very least, insight and perspective.

Expand full comment

"If there are fascists in America these days, they are apt to be found among the tribes of the left. They are Mr. Biden and his people (including the lion’s share of the media), whose opinions have, since Jan. 6, 2021, hardened into absolute faith that any party or political belief system except their own is illegitimate—impermissible, inhuman, monstrous and (a nice touch) a threat to democracy. The evolution of their overprivileged emotions—their sentimentality gone fanatic—has led them, in 2022, to embrace Mussolini’s formula: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Or against the party. (People forget, if they ever knew it, that both Hitler and Mussolini began as socialists). The state and the Democratic Party must speak and act as one, suppressing all dissent. America must conform to the orthodoxy—to the Chinese finger-traps of diversity-or-else and open borders—and rejoice in mandatory drag shows and all such theater of “gender.” Meantime, their man in the White House invokes emergency powers to forgive student debt and their thinkers wonder whether the Constitution and the separation of powers are all they’re cracked up to be." (Morrow.)

Expand full comment

Since we've been advised to use this forum, I'll include this review as well. (From 2022.) https://www.wsj.com/articles/fascism-comes-to-america-review-its-always-happening-here-11668981587?msockid=2b7fd0357f5961fe097bc37b7b596f81

Expand full comment

"It didn’t take much prodding, after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, for fascism’s explanatory power to grow. Two scholars who refrained from characterizing the United States as fascist, Columbia University’s Robert Paxton and Yale’s Timothy Snyder, stood out for independent judgment. Mr. Paxton’s essay “The Five Stages of Fascism” (1998) described political processes that escaped ideological conformity. Mr. Snyder’s “Bloodlands” (2010) recognized important affinities between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Yet after the 2016 election Mr. Snyder wrote essays and books about a fascist takeover, and after the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Paxton a piece in Newsweek headlined “I’ve Hesitated to Call Trump a Fascist. Until Now.” (D.G. Hart.)

Expand full comment

Continuing- "Readers may need whiskey to accompany that popcorn when they come to Mr. Kuklick’s brief excursus on American government and the Founders’ “agony” over democracy. He surmises that Americans’ obsession with fascism is the flip side of a collective inability to reckon with the calamitous gap between the Founders and contemporary America. The “Constitution’s republicanism” has given way to democracy, the very polity the Founders hoped and planned to avoid. Repeating “democracy” as a benediction and “fascism” as an epithet obscures the contradiction between American reverence for the Founders and ignoring the limits they placed on democracy. We “are estranged from them, and they ought to be strange to us,” Mr. Kuklick warns. The author’s point is simply that “an unthinking dedication to democracy” prevents Americans from learning from the Founders or acknowledging changes in their government.

His final observations about Mr. Trump may point the way forward. For Mr. Kuklick, the former president fails to qualify as a fascist because of an isolationist (not expansionist) foreign policy and domestic programs that favored federalism and localism (not nationalism). Moreover, Mr. Trump had “only modest electoral support” and was “disliked by well over half the voting public.” None of this was true of Hitler and Nazi Germany. The author could well have added that Germany’s intellectual class praised Hitler in contrast to American intellectuals who despised Mr. Trump. Mr. Kuklick thinks contempt for Mr. Trump is justified. But calling him a fascist, he rightly insists, is an awful way to express it." (Hart.)

Expand full comment

"This gets to another reason most Americans don’t think Mr. Trump is a unique threat to democracy. They have seen Democrats break all sorts of political norms to defeat him.

Democrats exploited the Russia collusion narrative in 2016 until it was exposed as a lie financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Democrats tried to keep Mr. Trump off the presidential ballot this year. Democrats have used the law in no fewer than five cases to disqualify him—and New York’s Attorney General campaigned explicitly on a promise to find something, anything, to charge him with. This subverts a basic principle of American justice.

Democrats—including Ms. Harris—are also candid in saying they want to compromise the independence of the Supreme Court with new political rules and supervision. If they get even narrow control of the Senate, along with the House and White House, they say they will break the 60-vote filibuster rule to do it. That in our view is a greater threat to the Constitution than anything Mr. Trump might be able to do in a second term.

All of which is to say that the fear of fascism would have more credibility if Democrats didn’t abuse power themselves. If they lose the election against a flawed Mr. Trump, it won’t be because he is a wannabe Mussolini. The reason will be the Biden-Harris record."

Expand full comment

Yes, Claire owes her readers an explanation of why she thinks the Netanyahu-approved judicial reforms in Israel should disqualify him from serving as Prime Minister, but she's indifferent to the Harris plot to pack the American Supreme Court. Shouldn't that be disqualifying, Claire?

Expand full comment
Oct 23Liked by Claire Berlinski

My comment concerns the “links” appearing in this comment section. What good are they if you have to be a subscriber of that particular newsletter to read them. The ones I have clicked on give me a tease of a paragraph or two then shut down, insisting I subscribe. Other than watching an annoying add about something I care nothing about or for, YouTube links work.

Expand full comment

“This is an important essay by Adam in several respects. I have an instinct--tell me if I'm wrong--that of the thirteen percent of my readers who plan to vote for Trump, at least a few of them plan to do so because the spectacle of our college campuses has been so utterly repugnant.” (Claire Berlinski)

Nope; at least for me, this has nothing to do with it. If you think things are fundamentally broken like I do, voting for Trump is a no-brainer. If you think things are basically fine and want to Maintain the status quo, Harris makes perfect sense.

American power is dissipating right before our eyes. The Uniparty is to blame. They’ve squandered American strength and they’ve facilitated American discord. Harris is the weakest Uniparty candidate in decades; even worse that Dubya. Trump certainly has flaws but you can't can't make an omelet without first breaking the egg shells.

Expand full comment
Oct 21Liked by Claire Berlinski

I am voting for Kamala. But she needs to stop sending mountains of begging texts and emails on the daily trying to get me to donate money. 😜 I don't believe in giving money to politicians even if I agree with their position on certain issues.

As someone with personal experience, abortion access is very important and I can see that being fettered away under a Trump administration. I also care very much about what is happening in Ukraine (even if it appears the rest of the world as forgotten) and the idea that someone bragging about being friends with Putin coming into power . . . well, that's a hard no from me.

Why on earth anyone thinks that a man who is apparently so uncertain about his own penis size, feels the need to bring up another man's penis at a political rally when said man is dead, the topic is not something anyone cares about (and more than likely has never thought of and now cannot un-think it) could even be remotely considered to be a rational leader is just astounding.

Expand full comment

The only way I could change my mind is if someone, who I haven’t heard of or from, is intellectually gifted, and not a member of this readership(how I miss Christopher Hitchens//perhaps Stephen Fry) could convince me that Kamala Harris isn’t part of the crazy left. That she would disavow these people running around with their metaphorical, but all to real, little red books. The red guards are back and they have power.

I speak from experience. Anyone who challenges their orthodoxy is publicly shamed and excoriated. The crazy left is really not interested in diversity, certainly not of ideas and debate.

My wife serves on several board of directors for businesses and occasionally a nonprofit. The first sign of trouble is when she was required to spend a weekend in reeducation before being allowed to sit in one of these nonprofits. I told her to walk away then. But they wanted her, they said. They valued her expertise and the fact that she was a successful woman, running her own farm in rural America. Over time, she realized her opinions were not wanted or valued, that she merely filled a spot on their diversity chart. One meeting she was asked how things were going in the agricultural belt. She mentioned things were going as best as could be expected, and that the area was enjoying a beautiful “Indian summer”. The DEI officer pounced, and when it was all over she was done. She resigned a few months later but the reality of what is going on in the halls of American power and business and education is truly frightening.

We live in the west near several Indian Reservations and have many Native American friends and acquaintances. We asked if this term offended them, and each said no. What offends them is some intellectual telling them what should offend them.

Other real life realities include the fact that every law, every tax, every regulation, that the legislature of our state

passes is designed to put my wife’s farm out of business. There is no representation for rural America.

I understand the fear that Trump brings out in people, but those very people seem to be oblivious to the menace from the crazy left. They see the enemy at the gates, the threat to democracy, but they don’t see the rot of ideas that is already among us. I personally see that as an equal or bigger threat to our democratic republic.

I think Trump is an ass; but it’s an ass I can see; it’s the predator I don’t see that I have the greater fear of.

Expand full comment
author

What do you expect Trump to do to make any of the situations you described here better?

Expand full comment

"So, what I'm getting at is whether we look at gender, law, the destruction of the law, the border, weaponized agencies—it affects every aspect of our lives. People are now wondering if they should buy a pickup or a diesel truck because it might get outlawed. They're wondering if they can install a gas cooktop or heater in a new home. The answer is no, they can't. This country has changed in 10 years. It's in the middle of a cultural revolution, and it affects everything.

If I had said 10 years ago, "Did you watch a rerun of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?" and you responded, "Yes, I love that movie, Gregory Peck was great," I would tell you it's now considered racist, white paternalism, and the book will be banned.

Or if I had said, "We're not going to ban graphic novels with inappropriate content in school libraries," you wouldn't believe me. There are people today who never would have believed any of this.

People across the political spectrum are starting to speak out. Bill Maher, Matt Taibbi, Megyn Kelly -- they're all saying it like it is. We need more of that, regardless of party or ideology. This country has so much potential, but we are destroying it. This can't go on. We can't take cities like San Francisco and destroy them with homeless people defecating in public and shoplifting with no consequences. We need people to call it out." (Victor Davis Hanson.)

Expand full comment

From the 2020 election-https://www.hoover.org/research/victor-davis-hanson-case-trump

Expand full comment

Is there a Trump doctrine?

"Hanson: Abroad, it is a sort of principled realism or ‘don’t tread on me’ Jacksonianism. American power is finite and won’t be diffused in optional wars where even tactical victories don’t seem to lead to strategic resolutions. Instead, it seeks to reestablish deterrence, and thus to be “no better friend” to our core allies and “no worse enemy” to our perceived enemies. There is a skepticism of global governance at the expense of nationalism, and even transnational alliances and agreements—at least to the extent they are deemed asymmetrical and not equally funded by participants. That said, Trump’s agenda abroad is increasingly aimed at containing China in economic, political, and military ways, and forcing it to play by international commercial rules—before its economic clout, population, military, and capital redefine the postwar global order on quite different and scary terms. Many allies publicly caricature Trump, but privately appreciate the restoration of U.S. deterrence.

At home, Trumpism is populist free-market capitalism—part traditional conservative economic doctrines of deregulation, tax cuts, and private enterprise boosterism, mixed with the doctrine of “fair” rather than “free” trade, in that Trump uses taboo tariffs to force allies and enemies alike to agree to symmetrical trade, while not letting the market entirely adjudicate social policy, as he sought to stop offshoring and outsourcing and maintain entitlements for the middle classes. " (Hanson.)

Expand full comment

Just for starters and for what it's worth, "The Republican Party fielded its first presidential nominee in 1856 (John C. Frémont). One man, and one man only, has the party nominated for president three times in a row: Donald Trump." (Nordlinger.)

Expand full comment
founding

Your and my perceptions diverge completely but you make excellent points and argue them well and fairly. Please consider that the "crazy Left" is a parcellated bit of the Democratic party whereas the "crazy Right" (I borrowed your term! :-) has become, sadly, the entirety of the Republican party. The crazy Left definitely is crazy but they also are sequestered, not representative of the whole. And Kamala Harris is NOT a representative of that group, despite what certain media would have you believe. (You should hear what she says about them in private! :-)

But what I really want to know... What is (are?) "sailboat deliveries"? I thought you made or sold sailboats? But perhaps it is a sport...? Thanks for replying!

Expand full comment

So sorry but as someone who is deeply immersed in progressive spaces I can definitively state that these extremists are NOT ‘a parcelated bit’ but are completely setting the democratic agenda as well as the institutional narratives with zero pushback from centrist or moderates.

Old school liberals, especially the older silent gens and boomers don’t tend to see what’s really going on, and keep believing reflexively that it’s (democats values) really just the same as it was the 80s - they are in a bubble removed from a lot of what is happening on the ground and so function as apologists rationalizing because they don’t see what’s happening in the institutions day to day and the real life policies that are being enacted that have nothing to do with liberal values as they have known them.

Expand full comment

And just to be clear about where I’m coming from: I proudly suffer from’TDS’ and think trump is truly dangerous and disturbed. Only now I am more frightened of the banality of evil of the broken left.

Expand full comment

Concur absolutely

Expand full comment

What an excellent memory you have. I had no idea anyone was paying that close attention to what I do. Yes, I have delivered sailboats around the world, but have not crewed any this year. Such is life as a mariner. Actually, I just do that when I can. I am a semi-retired veterinarian. Sold my practice in 2007 before the crash. Prior to that I was a research geologist, so I have my own set of views on climate change, and time, and space.

Anyway, my wife is in charge of a large, family owned orchard in the PNW. The west coast is solid democratic and run by the I-5 corridor (from Seattle to San Diego). Rural areas to the east of the mountains are poorly represented and get little if any attention from the powers in government. She has been a solid democrat since we met and married some 30 plus years ago. Things have really changed in that time. She treats her workers well and they make amazing wages. However, She has been treated with contempt and cruelty by those in power. Her political views are indeed changing but not because she wants to. She feels the Democratic Party has left her.

I’ve always been a centrist— to the left on social policy but slightly to the right on fiscal matters. So as Maggie Thatcher said, when you’re in the center, you get hit by traffic going both ways.

Thanks for the view on Kamala. The crazy left and crazy right are both despicable. Zealots have small minds in my view. My vote, whatever I do, won’t matter where I live. I have voted for Jill Stein in the past because neither the major party candidates suited me. Maybe again this time as a protest vote.

Expand full comment
founding

"However, She has been treated with contempt and cruelty by those in power."

I admit I do not understand this comment. I mean I understand it but my experience is the opposite: Irrespective of party, everyone everywhere in general tries to be helpful and respectful of other people. (Although customer service people unfairly get yelled at a lot.) It is only politics, and only the past 10 years, where teeth and claws are brandished readily with nary a second thought.

Perhaps your wife experienced not a Democrat (or Republican) issue but a human issue; iow, your wife had the misfortune of working with an asshole. They exist irrespective of party affiliation!

Expand full comment

In progressive spaces cruelty and bullying are the norm towards anyone who missteps outside the bounds of the received wisdom. Even if you don't do anything explicitly, but, say, don't put pronouns in front of your name you have a good chance of being 'called out' (or now, because it is supposed to be so much 'kinder': "called IN") This is absolutely engaged in with a level of self-righteousness that rationalizes away any cruelties as acceptable. You literally cannot win unless you are willing to completely conform to and bow down to this on every level.

Expand full comment
author

Again: What do you expect Trump to do about these progressive spaces? How would his election make this better?

Expand full comment

PS: a sailboat delivery is when one is hired to assist in moving private yachts from port to port. This can be down coastlines or across oceans. The owner either doesn’t have the time or perhaps the skill to move their boat to its destination. Some owners prefer day sailing in exotic ports but don’t wish to sail the boat to the desired locale.

I have crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, down the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, around the Caribbean and across the equator to Tahiti.

Expand full comment
founding

Thank you for the explanation!

Did you see the movie with Robert Redford, the one with no dialogue and only RR as a sailor crossing the ocean alone when something happens and the boat slowly capsizes? Even for all his knowledge and skill...

Yes, I am a landlubber, through and through.

Expand full comment
Oct 20·edited Oct 20

I think Trump is deeply disturbed and a chaos candidate. However, I cannot vote for Harris with her stance on Israel and I am very afraid that if the democrats win, it is the beginning of the end of Israel. I wish there was a reasonable republican. I think the democrats are sending the worst possible message to our enemies; that we are weak, that we won't stand up for our allies. We are a country of privileged people who do not know what it is to be under threat, and the idea that some utopian idea is realistic, that wars can take place without casualties; that there is no such thing as a just war -these are very dangerous ideas. I am deeply concerned that the radical 'progressives' and their toxic ideologies have taken over the democratic party, and I am fearful of them digging in with no pushback; and continuing to set the narratives. I am not voting because I cannot in good conscience vote for either.

Expand full comment
author
Oct 28·edited Oct 28Author

This is a big mistake. Go listen to some of the more obscure interviews JD Vance has been giving with various alt-right bro podcasters. There is a real chance Vance will either be president (Trump's clearly having problems) or have a very significant influence on the administration's decisions. He's the most isolationist VP pick they could have chosen--which suggests what's most important to Trump--and he is *adamant* about "not being the Middle East's policeman" and "letting Israel take care of itself."

I agree with you about the character of many Democrats, their inability to understand how dangerous the world really is, and their idiotic ideas about war. But Harris hasn't suggested that she's AOC. I won't try to boost her--I simply don't know what she'd do in office. But I can say with confidence that Trump would be a disaster for Israel.

The nightmare scenario--and the likely one--is Iran racing to build the Bomb after Trump and Putin come to an arrangement in which we betray Ukraine. Israel *may* be able to set Iran's nuclear program back on its own, but taking out that program probably requires the kind of military only we have. They need our heavy bombers, our intelligence, our cruise missiles.

If you listen to Vance, you know he is *adamantly opposed* to using our military in the Middle East. His view is that if Israel's worried about Iran, Israel should take care of it. (Likewise, Europe: If they're worried about Putin, they should take care of it.) He will not lift a finger to help Israel.

Would a Harris government have the guts? I don't know. But I know she's capable of understanding the argument against allowing Iran to become a nuclear weapons power--she is compos mentis--and she doesn't believe, as Vance does, that the US has no business getting involved in these "faraway conflicts." Vance, I suspect, like Tucker Carlson, basically does not care for Jews or Israel, and would, but for the imperative of electoral politics, say so openly. As it is, he makes it clear obliquely. I am not saying he's an antisemite (though Tucker is); I'm saying he just doesn't care, and he thinks Israel's more hassle than it's worth.

Consider, too: Trump's base is highly isolationist, and Trump cares about nothing but his approval ratings. The only part of his base that actually supports Israel are the Evangelicals, and you've seen where their preferences rank when they seem to be costing him in the polls: Look at his volte-face on abortion. The truth is that the majority of his base would not under any circumstances support a major military action against Iran. Trump knows this. He and Vance are running as isolationists. Take what they say seriously. They're trying to get your vote by intimating that they're be better for Israel and Harris would be "a disaster," but note what they haven't said. When asked, they consistently reject the idea of using the US military to protect Israel. Why? Because their base doesn't want them to.

Ask yourself who is more likely to behave, in foreign policy, as if we have a responsibility to an ally. Ask yourself who is better able to understand an intelligence briefing. Who is more capable of thinking about the future, as opposed to immediate gratification.

Harris will take advice from the military and the IC. I do not believe either would advise her to ignore it if Iran makes that sprint. I'm not saying this makes me confident she'd do the right thing--I'm not--but I think there's a chance of it.

Don't kid yourself for even a moment that Trump will somehow put "maximum pressure" on Iran and they'll cave. That's a fantasy. Trump is not some genius negotiator: He's the one who gave us the Doha Accords. He is a *terrible* negotiator who understands nothing but thinks he knows everything.

I sincerely believe--and I care *very* much about Israel's fate--that Trump does not give a damn about Israel, and even if he did, he is cognitively unable to understand new, complex information and make rational decisions as the Commander-in-Chief.

Is Harris ideal? No. But she would defend US interests, I think, and her view of America's interests is that of a center-left Democrat. I think she would, if push came to shove, make sure Israel wasn't wiped out.

Expand full comment

The Biden-Harris Administration just leaked Israel’s plans for attack on Iran to the Iranians. It may have been deliberate (I think it was) or it may have been due to incompetence. Either way, it puts Israeli lives at risk and it assists Iran. Trump never would have done that. See,

https://open.substack.com/pub/weapons/p/leak-of-sensitive-intelligence-to?r=dq3ii&utm_medium=ios

and

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-investigating-intelligence-leak-about-israels-plans-for-attacking-iran-e6b53968?st=d2EDPX&reflink=article_copyURL_share

Expand full comment
author

This was an absolute disgrace and someone will go to jail for it. But to say this didn't happen under Trump suggests you've had your memory erased. It rather famously did, and more than once.

Expand full comment

Will someone go to jail? Maybe. Or maybe the leak was actually authorized by a high official in the Biden Administration. The Biden Administration is chock full of partisans for Iran and the Palestinians. If Harris wins, Philip Gordon will almost certainly end up as her National Security Advisor. If you think Blinken and Sullivan are bad, just wait until Gordon takes over. He's firmily in the mold of the currently exiled, Robert Malley. With Malley, the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree. His father was a Jewish-Jew hater and Robert himself has been remarkably critical of Israel and jumped through hoops to assist Iran. Malley’s deputy Ariane Tabatabai still works in the Administration. Along with former Malley associate (at the George Soros funded “Crisis Group)” Ali Vaez, they were in continuous contact with the Iranian regime through the Iran Experts Initiative, which aimed to promote Tehran’s interests in the U.S.

You know all of this, Claire, yet you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that a Trump Administration will be more pro-Israel than a Harris Administration. Its fine to support Harris, Claire. The Middle East isn't the only important place in the world. If Harris is your cup of tea, that's fine. But your suggestion that Harris would be better for Israel than Trump just makes you look silly. Its the very essence of Trump Derangement Syndrome. You seem to feel the need to convince yourself that Trump would be worse than Harris on every single issue without exception.

You need to take a chill pill. This isn't the last election we will ever have. Honest people can have a different opinion about which candidate will make a better President.

You know perfectly well that Harris comes out of the Obama wing of the Democratic Party that is reflexively hostile to Israel. That wing views Israelis as white colonial oppressors of darker-skinned Indigenous victims. Biden came into office with decades of sympathy for Israel; Harris won't. Just yesterday on CNN Bernie Sanders was interviewed. He said that he's been assured that after she takes office, Harris will seriously consider implementing an arms embargo on Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is achieved. Don't you believe him? Do you think Trump would impose an arms embargo on Israel to force it to relent in its war with Hamas?

Expand full comment
author

Have you forgotten this? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/world/middleeast/israel-trump-classified-intelligence-russia.html

Harris will be better for Israel than Trump because, under Harris, the United States will be a more prosperous, stable, and powerful country. Trump will usher in chaos and he will tell our allies to screw themselves.

Which is a better ally to Israel: a United States that is reasonably well-governed and globally influential, or a United States in which no one in Israel even knows who to call in an emergency because Trump is cycling through "acting" secretaries so quickly?

Which is more useful to Israel: a prosperous United States, or one reeling from a global trade war and the imposition of massive tariffs?

Which is a more credible ally: a United States that remains in NATO, defends Ukraine, and maintains its power in the Pacific, or one that has retreated into isolationism and chaos?

Who is more likely to take Vladimir Putin's advice about how to handle the Middle East?

Who is more likely to take Tucker Carlson's?

Who is more likely to understand what his or her briefers are telling him or her? Who is more likely to have the patience to sit through a briefing?

Expand full comment

Matthew Continetti sums things up perfectly. "President Biden misread the 2020 election result. He took his narrow win — decided by 44,000 votes across Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — and bare House and Senate majorities as a mandate to govern like FDR and LBJ. Biden not only saw a chance to enter the progressive hall of fame. He assumed that the electorate’s rejection of Donald Trump the man was a rejection of Donald Trump’s policies. Rarely has a president been so wrong.

The more money Biden and Congress spent to goose the economy, the more his economic-approval ratings fell. The more Biden restricted oil and gas development and subsidized non-carbon-based energy, the more voters blanched at the so-called green-energy transition. The more Biden’s administration promoted DEI and gender ideology, the more voters associated Democrats with cultural radicalism. Independents, labor, Latinos, and black men drifted rightward. The party’s grip on power weakened.

Look no further than the stunning change in the politics of immigration. Trump’s immigration policies were dogged by bipartisan criticism and opposition. Then Biden entered office and reversed Trump, and for three and a half years millions of immigrants crossed the southern border illegally. Result? In February, the border wall earned majority support. In July, Gallup reported that 55 percent of Americans want overall immigration decreased. That’s the highest level since 9/11.

Facts on the ground shape public opinion. And public opinion shapes Kamala Harris. As senator, she likened ICE to the KKK. As nominee for president, she calls for more border agents. It’s surreal. It’s audacious. It might even work.

That’s because there is one issue on which the public has not moved right during the Biden presidency: abortion. The number of Americans who identify as pro-choice has increased since 2022, when the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and sent abortion policy back into the political sphere. Support for abortion rights remains high, with 63 percent of Americans saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases. When voters have been presented with a binary choice, they have opted to codify or expand abortion rights.

Harris’s logic is simple. Eke out a win by play-acting as a moderate on Trump’s best issues, while pressing her advantage on abortion. Trust that the gender gap will work in her favor. Rely on the vaunted Democratic ground game. Depend on Trump’s ceiling of support remaining at 47 to 48 percent.

I follow the reasoning. But I suspect voters see through the mirage. They have voted for many Democrats who campaigned as moderates and governed as liberals, and they inevitably wind up disappointed in the outcome. Why fall for it again with Harris? She might tiptoe toward the right, but her rhetoric is so vague, her manner so unconvincing, that the public continues to see her as undefined, unknown, inscrutable.

Either Harris will abandon her pose of centrism on Inauguration Day, or she will lose, and Trump’s second term will revive and intensify the Resistance. Either way, our rightward turn may be short-lived. Enjoy it while it lasts."

Expand full comment