Beutlerian Jihad

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 Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Brian Beutler, a veteran of Talking Points Memo and The New Republic, now mainly active as a Substacker, is one of the best at doing this one thing I can't stand, which he was up to again over the weekend: getting himself so worked up over Democratic politicians' failure to thwart the far right in its evil plans that he ends up assigning them all the blame, in a kind of vicious Murc's Law feedback loop—since only Democrats have agency, they are the effective actors when the right succeeds: they must be the ones responsible for the way our country is turning rapidly into a police state, they literally made it happen, through their fecklessness and timidity and lack of leadership. While Miller and Vought are diligently constructing fascism, Beutler is so busy complaining about Schumer and Jeffries that he hardly has time to talk about that.

Which isn't to say he doesn't have a point about Schumer and Jeffries, or whoever he's mad at at a given moment. What I want to say, rather, is that it isn't a good approach to doing something about it; it's a counsel of despair, frankly, which precludes the reader from trying.

This was especially evident in this particular post, where he's responding, precisely, to readers asking "What can we do?"

...the answer is unsatisfying, because it’s the same one you’ll get everywhere: Do what JB Pritzker says. Protest peacefully, record abuses on your phone, share the videos widely. Join organized marches—if you’re a U.S. citizen, the incremental risk of protesting is minimal. You’re likelier to be hit by a falling object or trampled to death at a concert than you are to be targeted for carrying a sign, or being an Indivisible volunteer or anything else. If you’re able, and if it comes to it, engage in genuine civil disobedience, though there’s more danger there: a greater risk of arrest, assault, political harassment.

Raucous Caucus

 Re-upping this from 9 months ago (just after the third ballot in Kevin McCarthy's Speaker race), with one incorrect prediction and one correct one

Drawing by Harry Bliss.

 

LOL

Things getting heated in House GOP meeting.

McCarthy swore in his speech, dropping a “god damnit.” And he made clear he would negotiate no more. McCarthy also said opponents came to him with “personal asks” last night.

Lauren boebert yelled in response to speech: “BULL SHIT”

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) January 3, 2023

Then Boebert even got a chance to deliver a funny:

Literary Corner: Raucous Caucus

Drawing by Harry Bliss.

 

LOL

Things getting heated in House GOP meeting.

McCarthy swore in his speech, dropping a “god damnit.” And he made clear he would negotiate no more. McCarthy also said opponents came to him with “personal asks” last night.

Lauren boebert yelled in response to speech: “BULL SHIT”

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) January 3, 2023

Then Boebert even got a chance to deliver a funny:

There's Some Magic

 

This Axios rubbish interview with Lindsey Graham 

What they're saying: "Donald Trump was my friend before the riot. And I'm trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history, and we're going to move forward."

• "I want us to continue the policies that I think will make America strong. I believe the best way for the Republican Party to do that is with Trump, not without Trump."
• Mitt Romney didn't do it. John McCain didn't do it. There's something about Trump. There's a dark side and there's some magic there."

Flashback: When Swan noted Trump is not showing remorse for his election challenge and still arguing he won in a landslide, Graham invoked McCain.

• "I tell (Trump) every day that he wants to listen that I think the main reason he probably lost in Arizona is beatin' on the dead guy called John McCain," the senator said.

gave me a weird feeling of understanding suddenly what Graham is actually up to. Because I've always resisted the blackmail explanation, which just seems stupid to me (if he's gay, everybody in South Carolina knows it and doesn't care, and I just don't see him as involved in anything actually perverted like Gaetz or somebody). 

Honey, I Shrunk the Emperor

 

Image via Popsugar, February 2017.

"MAGA Apprentice" is just a joke, of course, but you can't help seeing the sincerity in the way Trump is said to be entertaining the thought of reviving his TV show after he leaves the White House, and his lack of a sense that it would be inappropriate for the Leader of the Free World to return to the Black Lagoon from which rage at Obama had drawn him.

no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice — (laughter) — at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks.  And there was a lot of blame to go around.  But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership.  And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meat Loaf.  (Laughter.)  You fired Gary Busey.  (Laughter.)  And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.  (Laughter and applause.)  Well handled, sir.  (Laughter.) 

He may not have known it at the time, but I think in retrospect he sees himself as having been happy when he was making Celebrity Apprentice, maybe more like happy than he'd ever been before. He didn't have to work very hard, he was surrounded by celebrities, if not many of the first rank, and all of his decisions were right, at least as far as his colleagues were concerned. If they'd been working under the assumption that he was going to fire Meat Loaf and he was suddenly inspired to fire Busey instead, nobody reproached him, the way they'll reproach you when you let a casino go broke or can't pay a $340-million-dollar loan. They'd just buckle down and recut the show.

And the money worries that had dogged him all his life were gone! He was truly rich this time, making money practically on a Kylie Jenner scale. He was collecting golf courses the way other men collect vintage cars. The entire country of Russia seemed to be treating him like royalty. Who wouldn't want to go back there, from the awful anxieties besetting him now of debt and criminal exposure (you and I can confidently say he's never going to prison, but can he be sure, knowing what he knows?), and from the mark of the loser?

The Emperor Has No Nose (But He Thinks He's Got the Best)

Via Medium, and a nice post by William Sonn with an alternative answer to "Which Roman emperor does Trump resemble most?"—Caracalla, he argues persuasively.

Hi, I just want to turn the mic over to good old Watergate hero Carl Bernstein, reporting for CNN:

(CNN)In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

This is the first report of a four-month CNN investigation that seems to be following up on the Zelenskyy affair and the glimpse it offered of what Trump's leader conversations are like, bullying, cajoling, and focusing on his personal interests, his complete inability to sustain a normal give-and-take interaction with another person. Though when you think about it we've been seeing it from the beginning, with the reports of Trump's calls with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull

Great Brooks of the Western World

Heracles and Linus, alternative version.

"Daddy, where does empathy come from?"

"Why, son, that comes from reading the great books!"

No kidding. David Brooks, lamenting Trump's failure to be a Real Leader ("If We Had a Real Leader"), like Lincoln, Reagan, and Obama, not just because he's

a man who can’t fathom empathy or express empathy, who can’t laugh or cry, love or be loved — a damaged narcissist who is unable to see the true existence of other human beings except insofar as they are good or bad for himself

but also because he

is unlettered. He has no literary, spiritual or historical resources to draw upon in a crisis.

From Robert Kennedy on the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoting Aeschylus, to Ronald Reagan on the Challenger explosion quoting, ah, John Gillespie Magee:

With the Happiness

Donald Trump looks on as Bill Bryan introduces his graphic. Photo by Alex Brando/AP via ABC News.

It's pretty clear at this point—it's probably been clearer to most of you than it has to me—that the simplest explanation of Trump's Light-Inside-the-Body disaster was the correct one: he has no idea what's going to happen at any of the Covid briefings, since he hasn't paid any attention to the preparation or read any briefings, and was taken by surprise by a graphic showing the findings of a DHS study according to which the novel coronavirus on surfaces or in aerosol droplets has a shorter half-life in high heat or humidity.

Marcy (whose good work on this I'm just shamelessly scavenging) notes:

The NYT discovered that some of Trump’s advisors claim (anonymously in the NYT version, but named as Mark Meadows and Kayleigh McEnany by CNN) to have realized that allowing acting DHS Undersecretary for Science... William Bryan was going to be a mistake even before it happened. But Mike Pence liked the pretty pictures and good news he offered, so it went into the briefing.

Of course we understand what is meant by "good news": not good news about our ability to deal with the virus, but good news about Trump, evidence that one of his most embarrassingly stupid comments of this whole season, from last February

Literary Corner: An Incredible Phenomenon

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, on President Donald Trump:

"[Trump is] so attentive to the scientific literature & the details & the data. I think his ability to analyze & integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit” -- this is shocking, hackish stuff from Dr. Birx. pic.twitter.com/c2phsRYaJs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 27, 2020

President Trump, on how he found out from President Xi Jinping (rather than, say, members of the White House coronavirus task force) that the rumors are true—younger patients don't generally get as sick from Covid-19 as older ones do (text via RealClearPolitics):

Too Much Leadership

Image from New York Magazine, October 2014.

I'm compelled to give David Brooks ("Washington's New Power Structure") half a pass today: he's written a column that deserved to be written and even contains a little Brooksian witticism that's not entirely unfunny:

Dear Senate Republicans,

I really enjoy spending time with you. You are interesting and excellent company (I really mean that!). When I’m with you, we often enter a magical land in which Donald Trump doesn’t exist. You’re eager to tell me about the issues you’re working on, and sometimes we have these substantive conversations in which we get to ignore the raging dumpster fire on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact, sometimes I think the Senate isn’t a legislative body; it’s the world’s most expensive writer’s colony. Half the senators I meet are writing books.

The point being one that has been made again and again over on our side, that Republican Senators seem to have lost the sense that they have any power. Flake and Corker issuing their style critiques of Trump as if their oath had been sworn to the Constitution of the United Tastes are gone, but Willard Mitt Romney is carrying the work on with the same indignation, surprise, and impotence.

Give Peace a Chance

Via.

It was tons of fun mocking New York Times's Mark Landler for his silly piece announcing that Emperor Trump has "thought long" about the North Korea issue and "been preparing for it all his adult life" by going to military school and retailing mythical tales about General MacArthur, but in today's reality-based reporting from Singapore, the very same Mark Landler does some really good service detailing the progression in which Trump is surrendering to Kim Jong-un in the hope of getting to a place where he can declare victory:

The statement is likely to have three sections — dealing with denuclearization, security guarantees for the North and steps to be taken by both sides — according to a person briefed on the talks. But it was not clear that the Americans would succeed in extracting a more detailed commitment to disarming than North Korea has already offered.

If anything, the White House moved closer to Pyongyang’s language, saying it sought complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization “on the Korean Peninsula” — a clause that North Korea interprets as potentially requiring the United States to scale back troop deployments there or to shrink its nuclear umbrella over two East Asian allies, South Korea and Japan.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted the administration’s policy had not changed. But he confirmed that the United States would offer security assurances that were different from what Washington had offered North Korea in negotiations under Presidents George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. He declined to outline them.

Intellectual Bubble

Grouchy old Tom Hobbes and smooth-talking John Locke in a quiet, conservative moment. Horse Feathers.

Le tout-Washington is talking about a new book, James Comey's memoir of the events leading up to his firing as FBI director (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership), so David F. Brooks is talking literature as well, seeing "A Renaissance on the Right": "all the political turmoil is creating a burst of intellectual creativity on the right" in which "Young, fresh writers are bursting on the scene" (getting stuck using the word "burst" twice in a space of 13 words gives you an idea of how fresh David Brooks is) such as Charles C.W. ("Cromulent Whiskers") Cooke, Mollie Hemingway, and James Poulos among other even younger and fresher names I'm not so familiar with, but the youngest and freshest of all is our old friend Jonah Goldberg, entering the field with his own immensely subtitled new book, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy, which might sound better in the original German (Selbstmord des Abendlandes).

Which I'm not likely to be reading any time soon, after the disclaimer with which it begins—

It's the principal of the thing

Good budgeting makes good schools in Chicago as elsewhere, and everybody knows it, even the Republicans complaining about Rahm Emanuel while the Democrats complain about Bruce Rauner. They just want somebody else to supply the money. Photo via Illinois Review.

Sorry about the headline, but yesterday's Brooks ("Good Leaders Make Good Schools") really kind of forces my hand, because it turns out that principals are the thing that will bring on the Brooksian social transformation:

When you learn about successful principals, you keep coming back to the character traits they embody and spread: energy, trustworthiness, honesty, optimism, determination. We went through a period when we believed you could change institutions without first changing the character of the people in them. But we were wrong. Social transformation follows personal transformation.

All "we" have to do is change the character of "our" principals, making them energetic, trustworthy, honest, optimistic, and determined, and "we" will change everything. This is simple. We'll send them to principal reeducation camps. (Actually we have something like that in New York City, but Brooks is all on about Chicago for some reason.)

One Billion Dollars

From March 2017, via The Wrap.

Trump over the weekend, as reported by The Hill, seemed to be letting an awfully big cat out of his bag:

President Trump said late Saturday that North Korea must “denuke” before any talks with the U.S.

“Now we are talking and they ... called up a couple of days ago. They said that ‘we would like to talk.’ And I said, ‘So would we, but you have to denuke, you have to denuke,’ ” Trump said at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C., Reuters reported.

“We will be meeting and we’ll see if anything positive happens,” he said.

“I won’t rule out direct talks with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un. I just won’t.”

He took a phone call from North Koreans? They discussed entering formal talks and he made a proposal? Actually no, it seems this did not happen. As explained by an unnamed National Security Council official and confirmed by the White House and noted in Newsweek, the president misspoke:

Can Jared Kushner Do His Job? What Job?

In my film version of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, I'm casting John Kelly as the unnamed governess, Donald Trump as poor little Miles, and Jared Kushner as the unspeakably evil, but possibly imaginary, ghost of Peter Quint. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.

I can't get over all the solemn concern as to whether Jared Kushner will be able to do his job without a security clearance—like Mara Liasson audibly shaking her head on NPR: "He won't be able to read the President's Daily Briefing!", that single page of amply illustrated bullet points highlighting stories where the president's name shows up. Imma come right out and speculate there isn't that much classified information in the PDB anyway, not only because the governess is afraid Trump might get angry, or pass what he learns to Putin or Netanyahu or who knows who, just by way of showing off how clued in he is, but because there's no real positive point in it—what useful thing would Trump be able to do with such information? He doesn't even believe it if it doesn't show up on Fox.

So, the shutdown has shut down. Next?

Image via fivethirtyeight.

I don't know. I'd appreciate if people didn't say "Democrats caved". I've been running around saying for three days that it's not the Democrats' shutdown. If we didn't do it, then it stands to reason we didn't give up on it.

But keep telling us it's the Democrats who did it https://t.co/A6AORmr309 via @voxdotcom #TrumpShutdown

— Yask Not What Your Country Can Do For You (@Yastreblyansky) January 22, 2018

Here's the Republican messaging: WE RULE! OUR DADDY IS THE BIGGEST!

Profane and Rambunctious

One disadvantage of a largemouth. Via AnimalSake.

Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, celebrated military historian and literary stylist, in the National Review Online, on Harry Truman ("The Bigmouth Tradition of American Leadership"):

Harry Truman talked too much. He swore. He drank. He played poker. He was petty to the point of stooping to spar with a music critic who dismissed his daughter’s solo performances. His profanity was an open secret, as well as his temper. His advisers constantly cautioned him to tone it down.

As a Missourian who had once gone bankrupt and recouped with a political career though the help of the corrupt Prendergast machine, Truman carried a chip on his shoulder throughout his political career on the East Coast.

Yes, he's arguing here, on a somewhat circuitous path, that Truman (as compared to reticent, non-swearing, non-drinking, non-gambling Eisenhower) is pretty much the same as his alphabetical neighbor Trump.  Or "Think Andrew Jackson of [sic for "or", no copy editing at NRO] Teddy Roosevelt." (Disregarding the other cliché possibility of reminding us that TR advised everybody to "speak softly".)  Or William Tecumseh Sherman (as opposed to taciturn, but hard-drinking Grant, who was also, Hanson informs us, "naïve about the scoundrels who surrounded him"), or General Patton as opposed to General Bradley (who was "steady if not, on occasion, obsequious to his superiors in public and haughty to his inferiors in private", glad to hear he was occasionally not obsequious to his superiors, that's certainly praiseworthy):

Mercurial Is Not Always Wrong

Not saying Trump is exactly like Truman. "Yet":

For all his first-year achievements, an unpopular Trump is hardly yet an accomplished Patton or Truman. Nonetheless, we need to take a deep breath and concede that sometimes past mellifluous appeasement is more dangerous than present flamboyant deterrence — just as the sober and discreet can be more adroit in warping the Constitution through distortions and corruptions of the Justice Department, the IRS, the FBI, and the FISA courts than are the profane and rambunctious.

He's such a terrible writer. Lovely how he unlashes himself there from the mast of cliché ("take a deep breath") only to tumble into the rough sea of senselessness ("sometimes past mellifluous appeasement"). Glad to hear that Trump will be less adroit than some at warping the Constitution. I personally find the past to be always less dangerous than the present, but maybe that's just because I don't live there.

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Disquisition

Chiron giving young Achilles his lyre lesson. Roman fresco from Herculaneum, 1st c. C.E., in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, via Wikimedia Commons.

David Brooks ("The Essential John McCain") would like us to believe he is on intimate terms with a book by the Spanish philosopher Javier Gomá Lanzón, La Ejemplaridad Pública, 2009, of which no English translation has yet been published, and Gomá's thoughts on the topic of paideia, the ancient Athenian idea of education for citizenship:

The Fire Next Time. II

The important part about the David Brooks flood column that commentators seem to have missed is asking, if Noah had such terrible leadership qualities—

What does Noah do now? Once again, Noah is silent. He does nothing. He sits in the ark for another seven days twiddling his thumbs. He is waiting for God’s permission to disembark.

—why did old JHWH pick him for the gig in the first place? I'm sure there must have been some much more suitable candidate.

Look at ingenious Greeks Deucalion and Pyrrha, who figured out how to broaden the gene pool for repopulating the earth after their flood (the Titaness Themis gave them the oracular advice to "throw your mother's bones behind you", so they threw stones—the bones of Mother Earth—over their shoulders and these turned into new people). Did Noah think of anything like that?

Deucalion and Pyrrha casting stones, from relief in the Labirint d'Horta, Barcelona, via Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Tough Enough

National Review's Kevin D. Williamson, continuing his discussion of the David Mamet fake toughness of Donald J. Trump, works himself into a funny rhetorical pickle on the subject of the genuinely tough, where he nominates the military heroes, Senator McCain and former president George H.W. Bush:

The fact that McCain has been something of a disappointment as a senator and a presidential candidate invites reflection upon the actual political value of personal toughness. George H. W. Bush finished flying a World War II combat mission while bleeding from a head wound in an airplane that was on fire before parachuting into the Pacific, where he evaded vengeful Japanese soldiers who were just then engaged in torturing and eating their prisoners. He was somehow lampooned as a “wimp” by the same media that had earlier accused him of being a bloodthirsty killer (it was alleged that he had strafed a Japanese lifeboat), and some conservatives joined in that, Pat Buchanan among them. The wimp flew 58 combat missions, whereas tough-guy Trump might play 58 holes of golf in an unusually active fortnight. But George H. W. Bush’s genuine toughness and courage was nearly irrelevant to his performance in office.

Given that Trump has visited a golf course 43 times in the first 14 fortnights/28 weeks of his presidency, or almost exactly 3 times per fortnight, I'd suggest he plays at least 54 holes in a normal fortnight. (Reporters aren't generally allowed to know when he's playing, and he's known to have claimed he was doing a meeting when he was actually on the course; more details and possibly different calculations here.) The 58 holes of an unusually active fortnight would be when he's interrupted on the fifth hole of a fourth round because he's required to do something presidential. That would indeed be unusual. He's so lazy he's been known to drive his cart across a putting green, something even an ignoramus like me can recognize as disgusting. Perhaps that is one reason he is reluctant to play on courses he doesn't own.