October 2018 – Ralph Waldo Porcupine

Diminishing returns to extremism

October 28, 2018 Ralph Waldo Porcupine

I don’t have something I want to talk about at length right now, but I did just realize something.

A considerable amount of the lack of compromise in politics has been driven by the belief that you have to act extremist or be thrown out of Congress or wherever by angry, motivated extremists in your own party. At some point, elected officials are simply going to factor in that cost and accept that something like that is almost surely going to happen– in which case, they’re going to stop kissing the asses of the extremist activists. That is, the chance of them getting re-elected are going to get low enough that they have no reason not to say what they actually think. Then we’ll see a different kettle of fish.

Hay-making

October 21, 2018 Ralph Waldo Porcupine

The slow corruption of ideals of the Democrats makes sense if you see making hay as the point of the whole thing for many (not all) people. Some people– many of the base– believe that supporting the ideals and trying to fix problems is what the party or group is actually trying to do. But even they have to be pretty sharp to notice how political priorities subtly steer idealism away from politically unprofitable solutions, and frequently stop being a source of energy once the reputation for trying has been established.

The hay that they’re making takes different forms, of course. Sometimes it’s votes, sometimes it’s grant money, sometimes it’s a feeling of moral superiority. But sooner or later they run out of grist for the grievance mill, and then they have to start putting other stuff through. And that’s when the bullshit begins. That’s when the tail comes to wag the dog. That’s when the process becomes more important than the result. This happens on the Republican or conservative side too, of course; military spending is hay.

I suspect that if he exists somewhere, Martin Luther is having a quiet chuckle at the universality of human nature, because the capture and deterioration of moral institutions is exactly the circumstance he fought against.

The Democratic field in 2020

October 18, 2018 Ralph Waldo Porcupine

Who will the Democratic nominee be in 2020? That was the chatter at Nate Silver’s 538, in a sort of Round Table discussion that they call a snake draft. As a libertarian-ish Independent in a swing state, I just wanted to mention my thoughts about some of their top possibilities.

Elizabeth Warren. Ugh. About the only things she really has going for her (not with me, with the electorate) are that she’s fairly well-known nationally, she’s a woman and she has a portfolio, as it were, akin to Bernie Sanders’s– superficial egalitarianism. She could probably win the Democratic primary, but not the general election. The policy superficiality aside, her flaws are the long, public history of her whoring after minority status as a Leftist status symbol, and the fact that she’s condescending and schoolmarmish in an intensely irritating way.
Kamala Harris. Who? Yeah, I know, a senator from California. As though that were a swing state. Yes, she’d get lotsa donations from the Golden State, but 2016 proved yet again that money has a limited impact on political victories. Apart from that, she’s just another generic Democrat chasing after “historic!”
Kirsten Gillbrand. Known to me chiefly for having been handed Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in deep-blue New York. This was after Hillary was handed it, served without much distinction, lost her one competitive race before 2016, and was handed the Secretaryship of State. That particular office is not exactly one that tempers a politician in the white-hot flame of competitiveness. (True, fewer are these days.) Basically a nobody, as far as I’m concerned.
Joe Biden. A long-experienced politician, originally from purple Pennsylvania, nationally known with Executive branch experience. That he’s not at the top of everyone’s list speaks volumes about the Democratic Party’s poisonous addiction to identity politics and party identity narrative. He’d be the one candidate who could actually get the Presidency by winning it, rather than by the Republican candidate losing it.
Eric Holder. In baseball terms, near as I can tell, Holder would be the equivalent of a .240 hitter in AA ball. What does he have apart from being black and anyone at all having heard his name? (Another generic Democrat chasing after “historic!”– but Obama has picked most of the low-hanging fruit.)
Beto O’Rourke. Why on earth are so many candidates with tiny resumes at the top of the Democratic list? On the list at all, sure, but he’s like the 50-1 shot at the Kentucky Derby, and should be way down the list. His inclusion here is likely an example of recency bias. Unless he wins, which isn’t likely, a year or two from now people will barely remember him.
Cory Booker. Probably one of the stronger candidates, not because he’s black (see above about the low-hanging fruit) but because he actually has something resembling a struggle, as mayor of Newark, and executive experience, and some history of bipartisanship.
Bernie Sanders. Not a likely event, due to his age. Yes, Trump’s almost as old, but seems one hell of a lot more vigorous.
Michael Avenatti. He brings to mind O Brother, Where Art Thou? In that movie, the challenger in the Mississippi gubernatorial election is winning in the polls with a shtick about being for the “little man”, with a midget on the platform to agree with him, and the governor’s son says, “We could hire our own midget, even shorter than his.” Avenatti would be the Democrats hiring their own midget.
Oprah Winfrey. She might actually be formidable against Trump– nationally known and admired, being at least somewhat self-made through fighting her way upward, having been successful in business. But on the other hand, maybe not; being on a TV show where she gets to pick the guests and topics probably doesn’t prepare you that well for politics. And in any case, she’s not running, which is probably why she’s at the bottom of the 538 discussion.

There were other candidates on the list, but the 538 people were really scraping the bottom of the barrel at that point, and my remark about most of them would amount to “who?”.

The high road?

October 14, 2018October 15, 2018 Ralph Waldo Porcupine

Apparently, according to the N. Y. Times, Democrats think they’ve been taking the “high road”, and have been debating whether that’s a good idea.

What on earth do they think the “high road” and the “low road” are?

Apparently, Trump’s Tourette’s-like verbal spasms on Twitter are the “low road”, with Michael Avenatti being, perhaps, the vision of a Low Road Democrat. What the supposed appeal to the public would be of that sort of thing indulged-in by the Left, I don’t know. The German attempts to create a Killer Joke in the old Monty Python sketch come to mind.

But what’s the “high road” Democrats believe they’ve been taking? Supporting Leftists who hound Trump administration members out of restaurants and Antifa supporters as parts of the base who engage in merely “controversial” tactics? (Bernie Sanders, to his credit, came out unequivocally against that. But he’s not a Swamp-dweller.) Thinking they can spike a Supreme Court nominee based on 36-year-old allegations that are totally unsupported by any evidence, including that of the accuser’s best friend from those days? Seriously encompassing talk of eliminating the equal state representation in the Senate, the Electoral College, or the Supreme Court, for God’s sake? That’s the “high road”? True, most such statements appear in academia or serious media outlets first. But having a sitting U.S. Senator condone harassment for political purposes and paying no price seems to me to cross a major line.

One thing I did notice about the above-linked Times article was the complete absence of any perspective originating from the public. It’s the elite equivalent of a TV show or movie set in, and about, Hollywood itself. Let me, to quote a show beloved of the Left, The West Wing, spill this out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up:

The true success of any idealistic movement is not in getting complete control of Congress and the Executive branch to pass this or that law. The true success is not in playing administrative-agency tic-tac-toe. And the true success is not in Supreme Court decisions imposing blanket rules rationalized with circumbendibi about 150-year-old Amendments.

The true success is in persuading ordinary Americans in their private hearts. When done, no opponent can destroy it. Anything else, you have no right to expect won’t ever go away.

A victory for due process, or the confirmation hearings of Grand Moff Tarkin?

October 7, 2018 Ralph Waldo Porcupine

I hope you have energy for one more damn blog post about Brett Kavanaugh, who has now been confirmed to the Supreme Court. I don’t think herein you will discover any new or profound points, but perhaps. I deeply regret and apologize for my lack of editor.

Megan McArdle and Jonah Goldberg were right, of course, that there was no good outcome, at the end. Either the Left was going to be furious at having been balked and at having a woman’s accusations of sexual assault and attempted rape be disbelieved enough to not spike a nomination to the Supreme Court, or the Right was going to be furious at the nakedly political attempt to ambush a nominee at the eleventh hour with accusations of vile crimes that could neither be proven nor disproven, despite the Democratic Senator in question having had the accusatory letter for months without revealing it and despite the fact that even the people named by the accusers as having been there declined to back up the details or substance of the accusation.

I was and am on the side of confirming Kavanaugh. Naturally I’m glad how it turned out– in that one respect.

To Kavanaugh himself I am indifferent. If credible charges of any offense had been made back in the summer and he had backed out, or if Trump had withdrawn his nomination, and then Trump offered up someone else, I would have been fine with that. The way it happened, though, made the stakes rather different than merely the identity of the person warming the ninth seat. The pathetically obviously political quality of the timing of the release– to try to delay matters past the midterm elections next month– the hypocrisy of the Left (for example, in having covered up and apologized for Bill Clinton’s non-teenage mashing, or their apologetics for the crimes of black youths of a similar age to Kavanaugh in 1982, arguing that teenagers shouldn’t be held to as high a standard), and the Waterford clarity that this was about revenge for denying Merrick Garland a vote adds up to the unavoidable conclusion that rationality had nothing to do with the Left’s position. Which was more or less, to blither, fulminate and fling any shit that comes to hand, no matter how vile.

The Left’s position, when not purely partisan, is essentially one of emotion, and, depth of rage notwithstanding, it is still not acceptable to make nothing more than emotion a policy consideration. Emotion will, true, always play a role in human affairs. Voters need not hew to any standards but their own, and the fear of voter anger does affect politicians. But politicians must at least pretend to be rational. There has to be a real policy issue at stake which is argued to be more important than the other issue. For politicians, it cannot openly be “the depth of my side’s emotions must be more important than your reasons”, especially when that issue is something central, like due process or the Rule of Law. And, momentary fluctuations notwithstanding, it has in the end to be justifiable emotion. Emotion that one side has stirred up to a fury pitch out of a sense of identity does not qualify.

Voters on the Right got angry, too, of course, and that played a role. But the Right’s position is one of basic prudence and common sense: that if this is all that it takes to spike a nomination, we will all have consented to race to the bottom in terms of standards, and we’ll get a steady stream of accusations from the mentally unstable and cheap opportunists willing to lie. Even sincerity, which Kavanaugh’s first accuser displayed, is not enough. It might not be enough even with events only a year old, because the unreliability of memories and eyewitness testimony is well-known, but most certainly memories of events 36 years ago which no one else from that time and place supports, making an allegation that the rest of Kavanaugh’s life seems to belie, are not enough.

So the Left turns out to be who’s enraged, and will spin this into a political Just-So story, some new component of their identity narrative, along the lines of the confirmation by the Imperial Senate of a glib, fast-talking Grand Moff Tarkin making all the right sounds. But rage and storytelling and the rationalization of the imposition of end results are the Left’s normal modus operandi. How is this different? And in most respects other than taxes and the 2nd Amendment the Left has gotten most things they wanted for the past half-century. Honestly, I have no idea what they think they can rationalize to do in retribution, that they haven’t already or wouldn’t have done before. Spent options and burnt bridges make for poor leverage.

2016: the two types of issue

October 3, 2018October 3, 2018 Ralph Waldo Porcupine

In which I continue to try to parse the significance of 2016. (I hope they come up with a standard term for the events of the past couple years, because Trump-and-Brexit-and-Europeans-revolt-against-the-elite is clunky.)

Megan McArdle has on more than one occasion talked about “Washington issues”:

A Washington Issue is something that sounds terrible, has little meaningful impact on more than a handful of people, and most importantly, allows you to pretend that you are addressing a different, very difficult issue that would impact a large number of people if you actually tried to make meaningful change — people who might get angry and do something rash, such as voting for your opponent.

This is clearly correct, it seems to me. How does 2016 play in? Well, on that particular subject area of political science, let me theorize a bit.

As I see it, there are two basic types of issue. There are “retail” issues, and there are “luxury” issues.

Retail issues are the sort that the public really cares about. They tend to be fairly simple and easy to explain, and they tend to touch many people’s emotions. Jobs. Taxes. Defense. Football. The Left appears to me to imagine that their issues are mostly retail. The administrative state? Meritocracy and mandarinism? They seem to think these are all things the public is really on their side about, and are shocked and mystified when evidence to the contrary appears. (Washington Issues are a kind of retail issue that is high-margin, in business terms: high payoff, low cost in terms of tradeoffs. They’re the sweet spot for politicians, so long as people are fooled into thinking they mean anything.)

Luxury issues, on the other hand, are the kind that only particular interest groups and politicians care about. They don’t swing elections by themselves. They’re the kind of thing that you can use to put together coalitions, because the interest groups care intensely about their particular issue or issues, but they’re not things whose presence or absence sways the public as a whole.

And, of course, these are not fixed points, anode and cathode. They are points on a spectrum. People can sometimes be gotten to care more about a particular issue, and in fact that’s the nexus between the media and politics. Any time a politician says something like “let’s get a national conversation going about X issue”, the real meaning is, let’s try to move this issue from the luxury side of the spectrum to the retail side. This can sometimes be done, but if it is not maintained, it may slide backwards once the victory is gained and the policy enacted. And some things that were once inherently retail drift to the side of luxury issues by the operation of the entropy of public disillusionment with them. Public education is an example of this. People ostensibly care about it, but large amounts of money spent uselessly on it, together with a public perception that it’s been captured by administrators and teachers’ unions and run chiefly for their own benefit, has been causing it to drift in the direction of a luxury issue.

2016 demonstrates that the Left, and the global elite as a whole, has confused the two. The public as a whole doesn’t care about the components of the administrative state. The less able distrust meritocracy, a dynamic in which they are the losers, and non-elites as a whole dislike the identity politics of meritocracy, which is what we call elitism. The Democrats, in fact, resemble nothing so much as the character of Martin Prince on The Simpsons, who gets pushed down by Bart, to laughter from the other children, and says in shock, “They laugh at me? I’d always considered myself rather popular… My speed with numbers? My years of service as a hall monitor? My prize winning dioramas? These things mean nothing to them?” And he gets pushed over again, again to general laughter.

Unlike Martin, though, who responds, “You have made your point”, the Democrats have yet to acknowledge the point made by Trump when he pushed them over. They still think the bureaucrats of the Hall Monitor Agency and the diorama-building of the National Endowment for the Arts, are things with genuine and deep popular support.