The US Lacks a Serious, Functional Political Party

UPI Photos via The Hill

Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 28, 2024

The tweet above was obviously meant to rally support behind Biden after his performance in June’s debate (“dismal” is maybe the adjective I’ve seen used to describe it most often). But for me, it has a different effect. Obama’s reference to his own underwhelming performance in his first debate with Mitt Romney launches me into a sort of Proustian reverie. The year is 2012, Breaking Bad is still in its original run, dubstep is the big musical trend, and we have two remarkably normal choices in the presidential election.

Obama vs. Romney was such a normal, Serious presidential election it’s hard to believe it was that recent. There were plenty of antics in the GOP primary, from Rick Perry forgetting which agencies he wanted to abolish to pizza magnate Herman Cain’s brief stint as frontrunner. But ultimately the Republicans ended up with Romney, the strait-laced, Mormon former governor. He had been sort of a centrist during his governorship in Massachusetts, but had tacked more to the right and chosen arch-fiscal conservative Paul Ryan as his running mate. But there was nothing bizarre or outlandish about the ticket. You could hate Romney and Ryan’s politics, or even hate them as people — and I did both — but on paper they were perfectly reasonable candidates for a serious conservative party to pick.

On the other hand, you had Obama, the incumbent. His presidency had hardly lived up to the hype Candidate Obama generated in 2008, as the banks got bailouts and Bush’s War on Terror rolled on. But it was easy to overlook some of that as Obama shifted back into campaign mode, singing the right notes when it came to economic issues. His gaffe-prone vice president Joe Biden was not much of a factor, except when he managed to mop the floor with Ryan in the vice presidential debate. 

None of this is to say that things were good back then, or even better, really. There’s an accelerationist sort of case to be made that it’s better to have candidates as unappealing and outrageous as the system they represent. But the point is, once you got past the circus that was the GOP primary, both parties did a pretty good job of appearing Serious and Functional. That was the last presidential election, to date, where that was the case.

At first, it looked like the unseriousness and fundamental dysfunction would be a Republican problem. While the party was successfully hijacked in 2016 by Trump and his supporters (who were, in reality, the Republican base all along), the Democrats stuck with a candidate who was far from outlandish. Hillary Clinton was unpopular precisely because she was everything bad that people associate with politicians: an insider, close with Big Business and Wall Street, willing to say one thing in private and another in public. She lost for the same reasons that Mitt Romney lost four years before: both were so “normal,” politician-wise, they were uninspiring and even alienating.

But four years later, the Democrats took a big step toward their own form of unseriousness. In the face of Bernie Sanders’ surge of support and the failure of every other centrist in the race to gain real traction, the establishment lined up behind Biden — despite the fact he had looked to be dead in the water after Iowa and New Hampshire, and had doddered and rambled his way through pretty much every debate performance he’d had. He would have almost certainly lost (in the Electoral College if not the popular vote) had it not been for COVID.

And now, here we are. One candidate is a twice-impeached ex-president and convicted fraudster. The other is an octogenarian with an approval rating in the thirties and obvious signs of cognitive decline. Why the Democrats didn’t ditch Biden matters little. Whether it was because no one could convince him to step aside or because they really felt there was no better alternative, it does not speak well of the Democratic Party’s competence. Even if, after bombing at the first debate, Biden does step aside, that hardly shows that the Democrats have got it together. And, until proven otherwise, I expect our choice in November to be between the white collar criminal reality TV host and the unpopular, frequently incoherent geriatric. And, of course, RFK, Jr. — an antivaxxer with the voice of a goblin and a literally worm-eaten brain.

Again, this isn’t about policy. It’s about the fact that even before you get into questions of policy it should be obvious these are two terrible candidates. Even if you love Biden’s policies, his age and obvious cognitive limits at this point should clearly disqualify him from another term in the White House. Trump was an absurd candidate even in 2016, but at this point the only reason it isn’t flabbergasting that he’ll be the GOP nominee again is that this is the third consecutive time it’s happened. I cannot emphasize enough that, before you even get into The Issues, it should be overwhelmingly clear that neither of these people is a remotely reasonable pick for Leader of the World’s Sole Superpower.

As noted, one could argue this is all for the better, in some sense. Obama spent his eight years in office helping Wall Street reap record profits and blowing brown people to bits with remote-controlled death machines. Romney thought all that was good but wished taxes on the rich were even lower and that we could escalate tensions with Russia and China (one wish he would certainly get, in time). Both were horrible, and the real difference now is that our candidates are more obviously bad choices. Transparency is a virtue of sorts.

But, speaking subjectively, this does not feel good. The debate had some surreally funny moments, such as the golf argument the two got into. But most of it gave me the same feeling I might get watching No Country for Old Men in a room slowly filling up with carbon monoxide — a sort of existential despair mixed with disorientation and nausea. This election is a sight that’s impossible to look away from. But I’d certainly like to.

If Trump and the GOP Are Fascist, This Election Probably Doesn’t Matter Much

 

(CNN)

The debate over whether Donald Trump is a literal fascist has been going on for close to a decade now. It’s one I’ve weighed in on a few times, at first (back in 2015) to argue that he is, then in greater length about half a decade ago, concluding that he’s not a fascist in the academic sense but is in a more casual sense (but that it still may be wise to avoid using that label). I don’t really have any new arguments to make on that front: I still largely agree with what I wrote in 2019.

What I want to discuss here is a particular argument that’s been made with seemingly greater vigor in every election where Trump is on the ballot: that he is, indeed, a fascist, and therefore it’s absolutely crucial to defeat him in this election. If we grant the premise of this argument, it does seem superficially convincing. Fascism is, in fact, very bad — certainly worse than the squishy centrist liberalism the Democrats represent — and it is accordingly very important to keep it from ascending to power. So you should vote for the Democrat, given that they’re the only candidate with a realistic shot of beating the fascist. QED.

The thing is, I think that even if you grant the premise of this argument, the conclusion doesn’t actually follow. In fact, I would argue for the exact opposite conclusion: the outcome of this presidential election (and the last two) probably matters little in the long term and voting Democrat is largely futile if Trump is, indeed, at the head of a genuine fascist movement. 

Calling Trump a fascist is almost by definition to analogize him and his supporters to the major fascist movements of interwar Europe: Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and (debatably) Franco in Spain. So it makes sense to look back the history of these fascist movements and try to take some lessons there. But here’s the thing: people in each of those countries did elect non-fascist (or even anti-fascist) political parties, and it didn’t prevent fascism’s rise to power! 

In the last election before Mussolini marched on Rome, his coalition came in third place and got less than a fifth of the votes cast. When Hitler ran for president of Germany in 1932, he lost soundly, and in Germany’s last free election before World War II the Nazis actually lost seats and ended up with a smaller presence in the Bundestag than the two leading left-wing parties. And in the Spanish election preceding Franco’s coup and the civil war, the left-wing Popular Front came out on top. In each case, the fascists still ended up coming to power. Not shockingly, losing elections didn’t stop the fascists! Franco and Mussolini staged coups and Hitler managed to worm his way into power through political maneuvering that exploited the rivalry between previous chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. 

One of the centerpieces in the argument that a second Trump term will be worse and more destructive than the first is that he’s assembled a core of operatives who are both competent and loyal enough to put all of his worst plans into effect. But if that’s true, why wouldn’t he use that same cabal to find a non-electoral path to power, like the fascist leaders of old? We’ve spent years hearing about how close we came to… something (I’m never quite sure what) on January 6, 2021. If that “coup attempt” (as it’s been branded) was nearly successful and Trump is now bigger and badder than ever, why would an election loss stop him? 

You could criticize this argument for being defeatist, which is fair enough. So let me qualify it a bit. If you’re voting for Biden just as a dilatory measure, hoping it will buy us some time to implement a long-term plan to keep the fascists at bay, ok. But then what’s the long-term plan? The people most likely to be using this “Trump-is-fascist-so-vote-blue-no-matter-who” argument are (not surprisingly) also pretty likely to argue that Biden’s actually doing an ok job and the Democrats are good already. So what’s your plan, then? If three and a half years of Biden has somehow left us with an even more dangerous, fascist Trump who’s neck and neck with him in national polling, why will four more years of Biden prevent the fascists from coming to power? Sorry to break this one to you, but a broadly unpopular centrist president whose own supporters mostly don’t like him that much sounds like exactly the sort of leader a fascist coup would overthrow. 

As noted, I do not think Trump’s a fascist. I think his brand of racist, socially reactionary conservatism is pretty noxious, but I’m not concerned about this being the last presidential election we ever have (we should be so lucky). However, if I were, my focus probably wouldn’t be on yelling at people online who say they’re not going to vote for Biden. You can blame purity test leftists or the New York Times or Russia for his unpopularity, but even if you’re right, whining isn’t actually a political strategy! And if you really think that the fascists are this close to power in the United States, “vote blue no matter who” really doesn’t cut it as a political strategy, either.

I personally have no intention of voting for Biden. For one thing, I live in a state that Trump carried easily in both 2016 and 2020, and which he’s quite likely to win again, therefore (because of the electoral college) making a vote for Biden totally inconsequential. But even if I lived in a more competitive state I wouldn’t be planning on voting for him. Disgust with his unflagging support of Israel as they decimate Gaza is a strong reason not to, but I also just think Biden’s brand of establishment liberalism has no ability to actually fix problems like climate change and economic inequality, and that (based on election patterns post-WWII) if Biden wins this election some Republican — maybe Trump, maybe someone worse — will win the White House in 2028. 

That being said, I do think there are reasonable arguments you can make in favor of voting for Biden even if they don’t ultimately convince me. It is true that Trump would be as bad or worse on pretty much every issue, certainly including Israel-Palestine, and that on economics Biden probably has the (unimpressive) distinction of being the best president of my lifetime. 

I also think that there’s an argument to be made that the outlook for American democracy, such as it is, is pretty bleak (this argument I happen to wholeheartedly agree with). But Trump is not a fascist who will install himself as president-for-life, and if he were, re-electing Biden would be completely insufficient to stop him. So let’s maybe just take it down a few notches. 

Time Has Proven the Critics Wrong About the Ending of "There Will Be Blood"

(Paramount Vantage via thecinemaarchives.com)

In late 2007, director Paul Thomas Anderson’s fifth feature-length film premiered: a sprawling, 158-minute epic set during the California oil boom, loosely adapting the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. There Will Be Blood won widespread acclaim for its direction and the performances of leads Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, with Day-Lewis ultimately garnering multiple awards for his portrayal of oil prospector Daniel Plainview. But there was one aspect of the film that earned less than universal appreciation: its finale. Pardon the blatant laziness here but I’m just going to crib a few quotes from Wikipedia’s “reception” section in its article on the movie:

“The scenes between Day-Lewis and Dano ultimately degenerate into a ridiculous burlesque.” (Mick LaSalle in The San Francisco Chronicle)

“There Will Be Blood is not perfect, and in its imperfections (its unbending characters, its lack of women or any reflection of ordinary society, its ending, its relentlessness) we may see its reach exceeding its grasp.” (Roger Ebert)

“[The final scene] marks the moment when 'There Will Be Blood' stops being a masterpiece and starts being a really good movie. What was grand becomes petty, then overwrought.” (Carla Meyer in the Sacramento Bee)

“[The ending] might not be the very worst scene in the history of recent Oscar-garlanded cinema… but it's perhaps the one most inflated with its own delusional self-importance.“ (Peter Walker in a 2014 blog post in the Guardian looking back on the film)

For those unfamiliar with the movie or just in need of a refresher, I’ll review what actually happens at the end and some necessary background leading up to it (spoilers are inevitable here but also this movie is old enough to drive a car).

Throughout the film, Daniel Plainview has an antagonistic relationship with the less-than-subtly named preacher Eli Sunday (Dano). Plainview purchases the Sunday family’s farm and the area around it (with the exception of William Bandy’s ranch) but reneges on promises to donate money to Eli’s church and let him bless the oil well before drilling began. Later, Bandy agrees to let Plainview’s oil pipeline cross his property on the condition that Plainview repents in Sunday’s church, which offers Sunday the opportunity to humiliate and publicly shame Plainview for his treatment of his deaf son. 

Years later, immediately after Plainview has a final falling out with his now-adult son, Sunday shows up at his mansion as he’s sulking, drunk, in his private bowling alley. Bandy has died, and Sunday offers up the mineral rights to his ranch — the last piece of land in that area left untapped. Before he accepts the offer, Plainview forces Sunday to loudly proclaim that God isn’t real and that he, Eli Sunday, is a false prophet. After Sunday duly completes this self-abasing ritual, Plainview reveals the kicker: he doesn’t want or need the Bandy ranch anymore.

(NB: It’s going to be a little hard to do justice to this final scene in text, but here goes. Or you can just watch it and skip ahead in this blog post a bit). With obvious Schadenfreude, Plainview explains to Sunday that the oil reservoir under the Bandy property has been drained by all the drilling he’s already done on the surrounding land. He then mocks Eli as being just the “afterbirth” to his financially successful twin brother Paul. Sunday, candidly admitting his own desperation, pleads for Plainview to take the lease. Then, in a moment that predictably spawned a million memes and cultural references, a gleeful Daniel Plainview tauntingly compares the situation to if Eli Sunday had a milkshake while Plainview had a straw long enough to reach across the room, summarizing the result thusly: “I… drink… your… milkshake! SRRRRP! I drink it up!”

Like a cat with a mouse, Plainview chases Sunday around the bowling alley, throwing balls that he narrowly dodges. Mockingly (or maybe in a moment of sincere mania), Plainview declares that he is “the Third Revelation… who the Lord has chosen!” Realizing the danger he’s in, Sunday pleads with Plainview to recognize that the two of them are “brothers.” Plainview is unmoved. In a final coup de grace, he clobbers his nemesis to death with a bowling pin. When his butler arrives, Plainview — sitting next to Sunday’s body — tells him simply, “I’m finished.” 

It’s not hard to see why Serious Critics weren’t overly fond of all of this. It is, undoubtedly, over-the-top to the point of being comedic — slapsticky, even. The film’s strange sense of humor (if that’s indeed what it is) makes a few earlier appearances, but Daniel Day-Lewis bellowing about milkshakes and engaging in Tom and Jerry-style antics with Paul Dano is certainly more starkly absurd than anything else in the movie. 

But let’s review what just happened here. Plainview forces Eli Sunday to recant everything he believes in (even if only in front of an empty room), taunts him like a schoolyard bully, toys with him like a predator with its prey, then brutally murders him. This all comes after Plainview has spitefully destroyed his relationship with his only son. It’s an explosive fit of jouissance, to be Lacanian about it: by the end, Sunday may be dead, but Plainview — disheveled, drunk, and caught literally red-handed in the act of murder — seems to have destroyed himself and his own life as well in this act of libidinal violence.  

At first blush, the moral of the story might seem to be the old cliche about how money isn’t everything or something along those lines: if only Daniel Plainview had recognized his relationship with his son was more important and appreciated the spiritual values Eli Sunday preached, he wouldn’t have ended up bitter, alone, and covered in blood in the bowling alley of his cavernous mansion. But this doesn’t really work. Plainview goes out of his way to break off his relationship with his son, even when the latter seems to want them to reconcile. And bashing Eli Sunday’s brains in had nothing to do with money or profit. Plainview could have easily had his cake and eaten it too: patched up his relationship with his now-grown kid and sent Sunday away to deal with his own financial problems, all without losing a cent. Money didn’t drive him to this. So what did?

The answer to that becomes clearer when we understand the system Plainview represents — not simply in an allegorical sense but also the system that he acts as an agent of throughout the story. Daniel Plainview is the archetypal American Capitalist — literally sucking value (in the form of crude oil) out of the world itself and turning it into his own personal fortune through the magic of the marketplace. That in itself is not some groundbreaking insight on my part, of course. The RottenTomatoes consensus for There Will Be Blood describes it as a “sparse and sprawling epic about the underhanded ‘heroes’ of capitalism”.

On the surface, this line of thought might even make it tempting to agree with Carla Meyer, that “the story was so much richer before [the final scenes] – back when it wasn't personal, just business.” But, of course, the idea that there’s some clear line of demarcation between “business” and “personal” is one of those fictions of the capitalist system — a rule that it sets and then constantly violates. 

Daniel Plainview, in fact, consistently violates ostensible tenets of the capitalist order: he attempts to deceive the Sundays by claiming he wants their property for quail hunting, and then fails to pay money that he owes Eli. So much for the sanctity of contract and the prohibition on fraud — two supposed cornerstones of the free market. And, of course, he manages to get the oil out from under the Bandy tract without even bothering to acquire mineral rights for it — legally, perhaps, but in a way that seems to clearly violate the spirit of property ownership if not the letter of it (after all, he himself notoriously analogizes it to stealing Eli Sunday’s milkshake from across the room).

I suppose a True Free Markets™ type libertarian might argue this means Plainview doesn’t really represent capitalism, or rather only represents a corrupted version of it. But if we understand capitalism as a system that is constantly breaking its own rules (wage theft, for instance, dwarfs other forms of robbery), we can see that the corruption is embedded in the system itself. Plainview represents capitalism (particularly in its unvarnished, American form) precisely because he breaks the rules. 

Which brings us back to jouissance. A psychoanalytic term, Encyclopedia Britannica explains it as “an excessive and simultaneously painful kind of enjoyment derived from transgressing the superego’s own prohibitions” — in other words, from breaking your own rules. Capitalism is engaged in a constant game of jouissance then, of transgressing its own prohibitions to extract that extra bit of value — even if it comes with a cost. 

Capitalism is often conceived as a sort of profit-driven machine, devoid of heart or soul. Supporters might call that efficiency, while critics might call it bloodlessness. But Anderson’s film shows us, to the contrary, that There Will Be Blood — not just blood spilt, but all sorts of blood: bad blood, hot blood, cold blood, and in every case, red blood. Which is to say that capitalism is not (only) cold, calculated, and profit-focused. It is also inherently libidinal, driven forward by countless Daniel Plainviews, each with their own god complexes, ambitions, manias, and revenge fantasies.

Eli Sunday, religious charlatan that he may be, does not fit into this capitalist system. His focus on community and heavenly bliss beyond this material world doesn’t jive with the ethic of capitalism (there’s a reason why arch-capitalist Ayn Rand was so hard on religion). His last words, pleading with Plainview to see that the two of them are brothers, show that up to the end he has failed to internalize the worldview of the emerging industrial order. There is no use for a Brotherhood of Man in the marketplace, anymore than the bond between father and son means anything (as we’ve just seen in the previous scene). So Sunday must go, but not before he’s forced to admit that the only god is Mammon. All that is solid melts to air, all that is holy is profaned.

Sunday seals his fate by revealing both weakness and an inability to adapt. Whatever sins he thinks he is confessing to in the exchange that ends with his death, these are the ones that matter. Daniel Plainview, meanwhile, has amassed as great a fortune as he could have dreamt of and drained the Sundays’ property of every drop of crude oil it once stored. The only thing left for him is to engage in an another, final act of destruction, even after it has ceased to be creative. The Daniel Plainview that murders Eli Sunday is the capitalist id, finally untethered completely from its superego: both terrifyingly egomaniacal and cartoonishly over the top, breathtakingly amoral and comedically absurd. Not that we’d ever see anything like this in real life.

(nbcnews.com)

(Side note: this is also why the liberal critiques of Trump fall so flat. You can’t disown the personification of American capitalism while still defending the system itself.)

Did Paul Thomas Anderson have all of this in mind when he made There Will Be Blood? I don’t know. Probably not, but that’s not the point. You don’t need a Lacanian analysis of capitalism to realize there’s something animalistic at its core, no matter how nicely it may be dressed up on the outside.

The same (ultimately self-)destructive tendencies of capitalism are at work all around us. The threat of climate change (both for business and for humanity) hasn’t kept oil from being pumped out of the ground, nor has runaway inequality been stopped in spite of the long-term problems it poses for an economy based on consumer spending. Marx predicted that it would become harder to make money the further capitalism progressed, and history has borne that out. But the appetite of the capitalist beast shows no signs of ebbing. Eventually, destruction — libidinal, gratuitous, and spectacular — will be the only thing left. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a bowling pin smashing a human head — forever.

(via Pinterest)

 

Stop Calling Issues "Complicated" As If That Label Means Anything

Take a look at this:

 

It's very doubtful that just by glancing at this calculus problem you're going to know the answer to it. In fact, if you never learned calculus (or, like me, your last calc class was long enough ago that this stuff once again looks like a foreign language to you), you might not even know where to start with it. I think it would be fair enough to describe a problem like this as "complicated." Nonetheless, it does have a right answer (I know because the book I copied it from lists one). 

I'm sure by now you can see where I'm going with this. While the analogy between calculus and social/political issues isn't a perfect one, I think the basic principle still stands: an issue's being "complicated" does not mean it has no right or wrong answer. This might seem obvious, but I think it's worth saying explicitly because "this issue is so complicated" is one of the most popular dodges that I hear (generally from liberals or centrist types) when one wants to avoid coming down clearly on one side or the other. But that's all it is — a dodge.

The big issue this excuse is applied to at the moment is, of course, Israel-Palestine (I don't want to delve too deep into that issue here and my feelings about it shouldn't be hard to guess). But I've heard it applied to plenty of other stuff over the years: NSA spying, drone strikes, even gay marriage back in the day. To some extent, I can forgive it if it's just an excuse for a personal lack of opinion: "I don't really understand this issue that well so I don't want to take a side here." But what's worse is how often it's used to imply that no one could possibly understand the issue well enough to have an unambivalent opinion, that anyone who does must ipso facto actually be the truly ignorant one, and that the way to be genuinely enlightened on said issue is to, Socrates-like, proclaim that the only thing you know is that you know nothing (aside from the fact that this issue is just so complicated). Other times, "it's complicated" is just invoked as a sort of moral fig leaf, serving to dress up one's (controversial but generally status quo-affirming) position as being the mature, sane one to arrive at once you really process all the nuances.

Not for the first time, Matt Yglesias give us an exemplary version of a typical centrist-liberal practice taken to its smuggest possible version:

Crafting a durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems like it would be hard. pic.twitter.com/z7WVXxz1N0

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 2, 2024

I've got about 3,000 words on the Palestinian Right of Return and I think the conclusion is going to be "in summary, the Israel/Palestine conflict is difficult to solve."

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 15, 2023

I think part of the appeal of Israel-Palestine is precisely the intractability — you don’t need to ask questions like “is throwing around ‘genocide’ rhetoric bringing us closer or further from a peaceful resolution?” because nobody thinks a peaceful resolution is possible.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 12, 2024

Me and the shy Biden voter fam, stuck between inflation truthers and the “genocide joe” psychos. https://t.co/VfhnLRnSCC

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 8, 2023

If you’re annoyed that coverage of protest tactics is crowding out coverage of the thing your protest was meant to draw attention to, that seems like a poorly organized protest.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 24, 2024

These five tweets do a great job of capturing the entire mindset I'm criticizing here: note how effortlessly we slide from "gee guys this just seems like a real conundrum to me!" to psychoanalyzing the people who refuse to accept the so-called "intractability" of the issue (actually they're so focused on this issue because it's impossible to solve) to talking about them as crazy idiots who are so stupid they can't even do a good job of fighting for their own cause (which is also stupid). While contributing literally nothing of value to the conversation and, by his own admission, getting us zero percent closer to even knowing how to resolve Israel-Palestine, Matt's still able to congratulate himself simply for seeing how dumb everyone else is (because they, unlike him, fail to grasp how complicated this issue really is).

Of course, with Israel-Palestine or any other issue involving millions of people, there are going to be genuine complexities and difficulties. Personally, I wouldn't relish the idea of being appointed to a committee tasked with devising the best practical resolution to the conflict. But the thing is, you don't actually have to have the perfect solution to anything in order to recognize that (1) it is a problem and (2) the current approach to it is not good enough. What's the perfect balance, in the digital age, between protecting individual privacy and using surveillance to prevent terrorism and other crimes? I don't know, but I don't think it's widespread warrantless spying carried out by a government with a history of persecuting "subversives" like Martin Luther King. 

It is actually totally possible to be aware of the complexities (real or imagined) of a situation without becoming totally befuddled and unable to take an unapologetic stance one way or the other. For instance, I'm aware that there was a UN partition plan in 1947 that would have created both a Jewish and an Arab state, but was rejected by Arab leaders. I'm also aware that Yasser Arafat rejected the Israeli offer (supposedly for a Palestinian state) at the 2000 Camp David summit. (I'm also aware of the reasons these events are actually far different than they've been made out to be.) Somehow, that doesn't make tens of thousands of dead Palestinians more palatable to me. 

On this issue and every other one where the "it's complicated" dodge/cover is used, what I really wish is that the people using it would just be more honest. If this isn't an important issue to you, and therefore you wish everyone would just shut up about it, admit that. If you don't want to take a side because you're afraid of offending someone, or because your real loyalty is to a specific politician or party rather than to a set of principles, admit that. Or if you are taking a position that's going to make a lot of people mad, just do it without patting yourself on the back for understanding this "complicated" issue better than your opponents do. I'd respect someone who did any of those things much more than if they used the old, worn-out "this is just so complicated" excuse to try to undermine any moral certainty that can exist about said issue. But to take things back to calculus, I do wish I'd had that response as an option in my high school Calc AB class. It would have definitely saved some time and headaches.

The Left Won't Win Within the Democratic Party

Nina Turner delivers her concession speech
(Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images via Politico)

A week ago today, the modern progressive movement (to the extent that any such thing even exists) suffered yet another stinging setback: the defeat of Nina Turner, co-chair of Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign and former president of the advocacy group Our Revolution, in her bid to win election to Congress. In some ways, the Democratic race in Ohio's 11th congressional district went like a rerun in miniature of last year's presidential primary: when Turner had clear frontrunner status, major figures from the party establishment like Hillary Clinton and Jim Clyburn lined up behind her opponent Shontel Brown, and SuperPAC money flooded in, managing in the end to push Brown across the finish line.

The outcome of this election, for me, doesn't change anything—because I had already concluded some time ago that it's a fool's errand for anyone on the left to try to transform the Democratic Party from within. The 2020 primary made this clear to me once and for all: the Establishment is simply too powerful. It sets the parameters of the contest for power, it writes the rules of the game, and it is remarkably effective at winning that game. There is no "pushing the Democrats to the left" in any meaningful sense.

That doesn't mean that working within the Democratic Party will accomplish nothing, of course. No—in order to keep progressives and leftists from abandoning the party altogether, the Democratic establishment is certainly willing to throw a bone or two their way, every now and again. And occasionally, a progressive challenger can unseat an establishment-backed figure—even an incumbent (just ask Joe Crowley or Eliot Engel). But we're talking marginal, around-the-edges stuff here. There are not going to be enough AOC-defeats-Crowley type primaries to really transform the party, and the self-described socialist candidates that have made it all the way to Congress have so far been of limited utility, anyway. Which is not entirely their fault: they are working within a party and a political system designed to pull them to the right. 

Joe Biden's presidency has so far been illustrative of how little the Democratic Party has really changed, despite flimsy claims to the contrary. I've already addressed his willingness to abandon progressive goals like a $15-an-hour minimum wage seemingly at the drop of a hat, and recent events
only show how unwilling he is to deviate too far from the "center." In contrast to even Obama's attempts to thaw the US relationship with Cuba, the Biden administration recently slapped the country with new sanctions. Meanwhile on the domestic front, Biden allowed the eviction moratorium to lapse, claiming he had no legal authority to extend it—only to decide, days after the original ban had expired, that he did have the authority to put in place a more limited moratorium (so why not do that in the first place, one wonders)? Even this debacle overshadows the reality that the only thing "preventing" Biden from extending the original moratorium was Brett Kavanaugh's indication—not ruling—that he thought doing so exceeded the CDC's statutory authority. 

The Biden administration has, of course, done some good and important things on the economic front. But this is in the face of a major global crisis the likes of which hasn't been seen for at least the better part of a century. While it is certainly desirable to get the American economy back up and running, Biden's attempts to do so—and to provide temporary relief in the meantime—in no way amount to some kind of new New Deal, let alone anything more radical. He has taken actions that are absolutely pragmatic for someone who supports American capitalism as it has existed in the neoliberal era, and wants to return that system to full function—nothing more, nothing less.

We should also acknowledge that the power-holders within the Democratic Party are not the only thing preventing a left-wing takeover; so are its voters. Not surprisingly, the type of people who show up to vote in Democratic primaries tend to have reasonably positive views of figures like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton—all of whom are figures that any authentic left-wing movement must view as its opponents. On the other hand, the Democratic primary electorate is likely to exclude the type of people that the left should be trying the most hard to reach out to—those who correctly view both parties (and politics in general) as essentially corporate-run and/or alienated from regular people, and who are therefore disinclined to vote in either party's primaries, if at all. It's true that Democratic primary voters do often support leftish policies like Medicare for All and a higher minimum wage, but it should be clear by now that this doesn't translate into support for candidates who will actually deliver those policies. As long as the left associates itself with the Democratic Party, it only makes it easier for the Democrats to appeal to these left-leaning voters; after all, if two candidates are running in the same party's primary, it's hardly insane to assume they have similar policies and priorities. 

We should also take some lessons from history. For all the talk about Franklin D. Roosevelt and how he was successfully pushed leftward (which supposedly shows that Democrats, despite their flaws, are worth supporting), there's little acknowledgment of the factors that actually achieved this feat. Of major significance was the surging support for socialism and communism, both of which were represented by small but significant third parties. Also important was populist Louisiana senator Huey Long who—while a Democrat—had no particular party loyalty, and was widely believed to be gearing up for a third-party presidential run of his own before he was assassinated in 1935. While the US remained a thoroughly two-party system at the national level, these rumblings from the left were ominous enough that Roosevelt "lifted ideas from the likes of [six-time Socialist Party presidential candidate] Norman Thomas," in the words of historian Paul Berman. Even if the goal is simply to push the Democrats to the left (which, given the crises we face going forward, may not be enough anyway), it makes no sense to do this by wedding oneself to the Democratic Party before that goal has been achieved. 

This is not to say that leftists shouldn't run in Democratic primaries, or exercise whatever power they have within the Democratic Party to push it (ever so slightly) leftward. But if these are the only, or primary, tactics in the left's arsenal, it can't hope to achieve anything but very marginal successes. In my opinion, the only hope at this point involves organizing outside of the Democratic Party. This does not mean forming a third party, at least to start with (and it certainly doesn't mean joining one of the already existing, often laughable, third parties). Again, the people that need to be reached the most are the ones who are disenchanted with politics. 

The best way to activate them, in my estimation, is to reach out to them not about grand political projects but about the issues that impact their day to day life. What first united workers in the labor movement was not necessarily some ambition to build a new society in the future, but the possibility that they could improve their lives in the here and now by getting higher pay, shorter hours and better working conditions. Given how atomized society has become and how much shit everyone has to deal with day to day, it's hard to ask the average person to make sacrifices in hopes that we will one day achieve a society that seems impossible right now. But if they believe that by making some small sacrifice now they'll soon be coming out on top, that's a direct appeal to their self-interest. We're talking things like labor unions, tenants' unions and other associations that focus directly on the concrete issues that matter most to regular, relatively apolitical people, and offer hope of meaningful improvement in the short- to medium-term. Once groups of this sort have flourished and achieved some successes to energize their members, they could then set their sights higher. Such groups could also serve to educate their members and convince them that it's worth it to become part of a broader left-wing political project. 

I am not delusional enough to think that this process would be as quick and easy as I'm making it sound. At this point, the odds of bringing about some kind of truly just and equitable society—or even avoiding catastrophe—do not appear to be in our favor. If I had to make a prediction about how things would turn out, it would not be a favorable one. But this does not mean the left should resign itself to a bleak future, or to simply rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. There may be few paths, at this point, that lead to a truly brighter future; but even so, I believe all of them lie outside of the Democratic Party.

China: Our Best Worst Frenemy

Chinese President Xi Jinping
(Ju Peng/Associated Press via the Wall Street Journal)

 

Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Analogies like this are trite, of course, but sometimes they're impossible to resist. While, on the whole, the world could certainly do with fewer Nineteen Eighty-Four comparisons, the United States' complicated and shifting relationship with China is a particularly striking example of life imitating art. It truly does look like we may be entering into some era of neo-Cold War with the People's Republic, potentially one with all the same subterfuge, sabotage and espionage we remember from our last one with the USSR—updated with all the latest technological innovations, of course. But where things get really interesting is when you look at the people leading us into this new morass. 

Case in point: President Joe Biden. In his recent address before a joint session of Congress, he proclaimed that "[w]e’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century," and detailed how he had told Chinese president Xi Jinping that "we’ll maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific, just as we do with NATO in Europe" and "America will not back away from our commitments—our commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms and to our alliances." This strong stance was nothing new: in the final Democratic primary debate last year, Biden had compared China to Jack the Ripper, and his campaign released an ad accusing then-president Trump of "roll[ing] over for the Chinese" in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But if China is some kind of global Jack the Ripper that must be opposed at every turn, Joe Biden has a great deal to answer for. At the turn of the century, as Senator from Delaware, he voted—along with a majority of Senators from both parties—to extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly known as Most Favored Nation status) to the People's Republic of China. Speaking before the Committee on Foreign Relations, Biden promised that "granting China permanent normal trade status would put our relationship on a more firm foundation and begin to build trust," and that "getting China into the World Trade Organization, a rules-based organization, will subject China to multilateral pressures on trade and, over time, enhance their respect for the rule of law[.]" 

Nor was this an uncontroversial stance, even at the time. In the House of Representatives, PNTR with China was opposed by a majority of Democrats (and Vermont's independent Congressman, one Bernard Sanders—whom Biden's China-as-Jack-the-Ripper analogy would, ironically, be directed at some 20 years later). A report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argued that 

The potential benefits to the trade agreement are small—even by the supporters’ calculations—and largely benefit investors by providing them with wider choices of foreign investment opportunities. A more realistic analysis indicates that the net impact on U.S. employment and domestic business is likely to be negative rather than positive.   Furthermore, the claimed geopolitical benefits of this trade agreement are less than credible. Given the United States’ recent experiences in Russia and Mexico, the assumption that the United States can identify the true Chinese “reformers,” that these leaders will ultimately prevail in the political arena, and that the acceptance of an ever-widening trade imbalance will turn China into a democratic, free-market economy cannot be taken seriously.

It concluded by noting the "costs and dangers of this proposal substantially outweigh any potential gains for the United States."

It is not hard to see who was vindicated by the course of events since China was granted PNTR in 2000. Matt Yglesias, formerly a defender of the notion that PNTR had relatively little impact on the American economy, wrote in 2016 that "making NTR status permanent led to a very rapidly [sic] displacement of American manufacturing work by Chinese imports in a way few PNTR proponents anticipated or have even acknowledged." When Biden, in his address before Congress last month, claimed that "[t]here is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing," he overlooked (and perhaps intentionally obscured) the way in which the policy he supported led to exactly this sort of result. 

On the "other side" of the aisle, of course, the situation is no less farcical. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in urging the Biden administration to continue Trump's "tough approach" toward China, he too voted for PNTR back in 2000. Indeed, while the line that Biden is soft on—or even in league with—China is popular on the Right, Republicans in both houses of Congress overwhelmingly voted to give the PRC largely unfettered access to American markets. 

So what explains this rather significant shift in politicians' attitudes toward the world's most populous country? This is, of course, a multifaceted question with no quick or easy answer. However, one common thread unites all the major possible factors: the interests of the American ruling class. 

One piece of the puzzle may be President Xi Jinping's differences from his immediate predecessors. An article for the New Yorker notes that "[u]nder Xi, market reforms have stalled, and schools have replaced books by Western economists with tracts published by the Marxist Theory Research and Building Project." Furthermore, 

Beijing has directed billions in subsidies and research funds to help Chinese companies surpass foreign competitors on such frontiers as electric vehicles and robotics. A Pentagon report commissioned under Obama warned that the U.S. was losing cutting-edge technology to China, not only through theft but also through Chinese involvement in joint ventures and tech startups.

Another major issue is intellectual property. In his argument for PNTR back in 2000, Biden claimed China would "agree to increased protection of our intellectual property laws," but the Biden administration's trade office now says China is still "fall[ing] short of the full range of fundamental changes needed to improve the IP landscape[.]" China's so-called "intellectual property theft" has reportedly cost American companies hundreds of billions of dollars per year—no doubt a source of some irritation. If PNTR failed to solve this "problem," it is no surprise that a new (and less friendly) approach is now desired. 

There are other factors as well. For instance, China's loans to developing countries and international Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure project also threaten to pull other countries into its orbit in ways that challenge US hegemony. But more important, perhaps, than any transgression on China's part is the role that it can play as our nemesis. A second Cold War would, of course, be a boon for the much-discussed military-industrial complex, but that is far from the only purpose it would serve. At a time when economic and social inequality runs rampant in the United States and the cracks in the American body politic have grown more visible, a rivalry with another Great Power offers a welcome distraction. If anything can unite the American people once more, it is a new common enemy. China makes an especially convenient scapegoat given its above-discussed significance in the de-industrialization of the US. Why acknowledge the role American politicians played in letting jobs get shipped overseas when they can simply blame the country where the jobs have been moved to? 

Senator Chris Coons came close to admitting this calculus when he spoke at an April 22 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

Let me close by being optimistic about our ability to invest in innovation, science, and competitiveness here in the United States. If we look back at what happened when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, it was a moment that was a genuine wake-up call for the American people. And as a result, Congress and the administration invested in STEM education, invested in research, and in fundamental and applied science, and the benefits of that lasted for two generations.

January 6 was a moment that was challenging, divisive, difficult for all of us here in Congress, and it was a wake-up call that our country is badly divided. And the ways in which China has become a peer competitor in investing in R&D, in the number of patents issued, the number of research papers published, and the ways in which they are now trying to take the lead in standard essential—standard-setting bodies—that recent campaign to put a Chinese national at the head of the WIPO, where the PTO director, Andrei Iancu, was—did yeoman’s work to make sure that someone committed to a strong intellectual property system globally instead became the head of the WIPO—all of this is a wake-up call for us that we need to have another Sputnik-like moment of reinvestment in American innovation and competitiveness.

"[T]he implication[,]" Luke Savage correctly notes in an article for Jacobin, is "that America can and should try to rectify its internal cultural divisions by rallying the nation against global competitors[.]"

Acknowledging the cynical motivations behind the push for a new Cold War does not, of course, require that one pretend China’s government has done nothing wrong. From its treatment of the country’s Uighur minority to its clampdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, there is a great deal that merits (and has received) strong criticism. But, while these serious offenses may be invoked as justification for a new Cold War, it’s difficult to take this pretext very seriously when the US continues to ally with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and numerous other countries whose governments are also guilty of major crimes.

The proper stance on the new China-US conflict, in my view, is not support for either side, nor even simple neutrality. Rather, we should recognize the ways in which the governments of both countries betray the citizens they are supposed to be serving, and that it is in the interest of the Chinese and American people to live peacefully and to cooperate—not to compete. As we face global crises like climate change and growing inequality, the last thing we need is another interstate contest.

The Past Week Has Put Biden's Skewed Priorities on Full Display

Pop quiz: you're the new president of a nation that's experienced decades of wage stagnation, rising inequality, and where many low-paid workers have no choice but go to their jobs in person despite the fact that there's a contagious pandemic that has killed 500,000 people in this country alone. Which of the three options below is NOT a crucial thing to get done right now:      

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via Politico)

A.) Convince the Senate to overcome their hesitance and confirm your nominee for the director of the OMB, a person who happens to be an bad boss with a history of left-punching (quite literally, in at least one alleged case);

B.) Order airstrikes to be carried out in a country the United States is not at war with, in violation of both the Constitution and international law; 

or 

C.) Raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in over a decade.

If you answered C, congratulations—the sitting president of the United States agrees with you. After the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a $15 an hour minimum wage could not be passed as part of the COVID relief package using budget reconciliation rules, Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated that "President Biden is disappointed in this outcome" but that he "respects the parliamentarian's decision and the Senate's process." To be perfectly clear, as an unelected official the parliamentarian's ruling is purely advisory, and could be completely ignored by Kamala Harris in her role as president of the Senate. But nonetheless, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain had already indicated beforehand that the Biden administration had no intent of exercising this option were the parliamentarian not to rule in its favor. In fact, whether Biden and his crew are actually "disappointed," as Psaki claimed, seems questionable; CNN reports that "far from being a defeat, the ruling is viewed as clearing the way for the bill's passage in the Senate, [according to] a Biden administration official[.]"

Now that the House has passed a version of the COVID relief bill that includes a minimum wage hike, if Kamala Harris did overrule the parliamentarian, the Senate could simply pass that same bill and deliver it to Joe Biden's desk—rather than wasting time by stripping out the minimum wage provision and then sending the modified bill back to the House for its approval. Some of the Democratic caucus's more conservative members may not like the inclusion of the minimum wage hike, but whether they would actually have the gall to sink the entire COVID relief bill because they objected to one (widely popular) provision within it seems at least questionable. 

Perhaps the Biden administration's willingness to abandon the minimum wage raise would be a little more forgivable if not for some of its other recent actions. For one thing, there's of course the Neera Tanden saga. Tanden, who Biden nominated to head the Office of Management and Budget, has come under fire for a less-than-charming online persona that's involved attacks on those both to her right and to her left. But mean tweets are pretty far from her worst offense. As a senior aide to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, Tanden assaulted a journalist who asked Clinton about her support for the Iraq War. A 2018 exposé by BuzzFeed News revealed that, based on the accounts of 19 current and former staffers, the Center for American Progress (of which Tanden is the president) had failed to adequately respond to sexual harassment by one of its employees. To make matters worse, in an all-staff meeting after the exposé was published, Tanden named the anonymous victim of sexual harassment the story had centered around, shocking the employees in attendance. 

None of this even touches on how fundamentally compromised the Center for American Progress is itself. According to the Washington Post, the think tank "received at least $33 million in donations from firms in the financial sector, private foundations primarily funded by wealth earned on Wall Street and in other investment firms, and current or former executives at financial firms such as Bain Capital, Blackstone and Evercore" between the years 2014 and 2019. Under Tanden's leadership, CAP has aggressively courted these deep-pocketed donors. The organization has also, in recent years, accepted between $1.5 million and $3 million dollars from the dictatorial government of the United Arab Emirates, which has joined Saudi Arabia in its murderous assault on Yemen. Not surprisingly, these large donations seem to have had an effect: CAP declined to support a bipartisan Senate resolution designed to end American involvement in the war in Yemen, and an unsigned essay on the organization's website lauded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The think tank also censored its own report on anti-Muslim bias in the US by removing a chapter on New York City's surveillance of Muslim communities under Michael Bloomberg, who has given handsomely to CAP both before and after the publication of the report.

Nominating someone like this for a cabinet-level position is bad enough, but what's happened since makes it all the more insulting. Not shockingly, Neera Tanden's nomination has run into trouble in the Senate, as both Democrat Joe Manchin and a number of more "moderate" Republicans have expressed their intent to oppose her confirmation. Committee votes have even been postponed to give Senators more time to consider Tanden's nomination, which at this point is hanging by a thread. But rather than doing the obvious thing—withdrawing her nomination and finding a less controversial alternative—Biden has continued to stand by Tanden. Press Secretary Psaki has tweeted support for this "leading policy expert who brings critical qualifications to the table" and Ron Klain told MSNBC's Joy Reid that "[w]e're fighting our guts out to get [Tanden] confirmed."

But getting Tanden confirmed isn't the only thing that's apparently more urgent than raising the minimum wage. Biden also ordered that a "defensive" bombing be carried out on buildings in Syria, killing at least 22 people according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. As Rutgers Law School Professor Adil Ahmad Haque writes, the 

airstrikes almost certainly violated international law, for two basic reasons. The airstrikes did not repel an ongoing armed attack, halt an imminent one, or immediately respond to an armed attack that was in fact over but may have appeared ongoing at the time...And the airstrikes were carried out on the territory of another State, without its consent, against a non-State actor...These two reasons, combined, are decisive. It cannot be lawful to use armed force on the territory of another State when it is clear that no armed attack by a non-State actor is ongoing or even imminent.

[...]

The U.S. airstrikes were not defensive. They were expressive. The Pentagon says that the operation "sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel." The operation sends another message: President Biden will violate international law, much like his predecessors.

And even Democratic Senator Tim Kaine (who was the party's 2016 candidate for vice president) noted that "[o]ffensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances," and demanded to know "the Administration’s rationale for these strikes and its legal justification for acting without coming to Congress."

It's hard to see, in any case, how the strikes serve to draw the seemingly never-ending American military involvement in the Middle East any nearer to a close. The buildings struck by the bombs were, according to the Pentagon, being used by Iranian-backed militias, and the bombing was carried out in response to rocket attacks on American targets in Iraq. The obvious solution, some might say, would be to end the US presence in Iraq as quickly as is practical, rather than further escalating tensions with a significant regional power that already has plenty of reason to be angry with the United States. But that sort of thinking has long been rejected by those in charge of the US government, and that doesn't appear likely to change any time soon. 

Such are the twisted priorities of the Biden administration: Neera Tanden's confirmation is worth "fighting [their] guts out" for, and airstrikes in Syria must go ahead without Congressional approval and in violation of international law—but if the Senate parliamentarian says no minimum wage increase, well, that's that. To be fair, Biden has of course found time to take some positive steps: the continued suspension of student loan payments is one I'm personally grateful for, and reentering the Paris climate agreement is a plus. But for anyone still under the illusion Biden will govern as a new FDR, the past couple weeks should be enlightening. Anything that provides long-term help for the working class ranks as one of the least pressing, most disposable elements of the Biden agenda. That's nothing new, but it's certainly not encouraging.