Goodbye Principled What?

Illustration by Alex Cai via Streak Club.

Say, what's in this barrel ("Goodbye Principled Conservatism" by Bret Stephens)? It appears to be full of fish!

How did the conservative movement reach this pass? Hemingway’s great line about how one goes bankrupt — “gradually, then suddenly” — seems apt. But the tipping point arrived on a precise date: July 20, 2015. That was the day Rush Limbaugh came to Trump’s political rescue after the developer nearly self-immolated with his remark that John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war, refusing early release at the price of gruesome torture, should not be considered a war hero.

I don't know, I'd go for 1957 myself:

In 1957, Buckley wrote National Review’s most infamous editorial, entitled “Why the South Must Prevail.” Is the white community in the South, he asked, “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?” His answer was crystal clear: “The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because for the time being, it is the advanced race.” Buckley cited unfounded statistics demonstrating the superiority of white over black, and concluded that, “it is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.” He added definitively: “the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage.”

Why don't conservatives care about manners any more?

Literary Corner: Telling It Slant

Joely Richardson in William Luce's The Belle of Amherst, off-Broadway 2014, photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN. Charles Isherwood at The Times didn't think the concept had a chance of working: "Although the posthumous publication of her extraordinary poetry made Dickinson a celebrated literary figure, during her lifetime, she was known in her hometown primarily for a reclusiveness bordering on pathology. The notion that she would confide her life story and her most deeply felt poems — or even her recipes for cake and gingerbread — to a couple of hundred strangers a night renders Mr. Luce’s play almost nonsensical from the get-go."

If President Obama Made the Deals

by Donald J. Trump

If President Obama made
the deals that I have made -
both - at the Border - and
for the Economy -

the Corrupt Media would be hailing
them as Incredible -
& a National Holiday would be
immediately declared - 

With me - despite our record
setting Economy -
and all that I have done -
no credit!

Literary Corner: Trade Wars

The Battle of Nájera, 1367, illumination likely by Loiset Lyédet from a Flemish manuscript of Froissart's Chronicles, 1470s, in the Bibliothèque Nationale Française, via Wikimedia Commons.

Villanelle of the Trade War

Fasten your seat belts and brace for the spin
Nobody needs to get hurt in the fray
Trade wars are good and easy to win

We're raising the tariffs on cotton and tin
They're raising the tariffs on copper and hay
Fasten your seat belts and brace for the spin

The president waits for the cash to roll in
He's feeling annoyed and someone must pay
Trade wars are good and easy to win

The public looks ruefully on with a grin
Somebody's tanking the market today
Fasten your seat belts and brace for the spin

The bartender's pouring out fingers of gin
The brokers are shoving you out of the way
Trade wars are good and easy to win

The president's kicking his foes in the shin
The press watches rapt at the awesome display
Fasten your seat belts and brace for the spin
Trade wars are good and easy to win

Literary Corner: Days on the Border

One of the most 25th-Amendment things yet, from Trump's Mar-a-Lago Thanksgiving press availability, as reported at Huffington Post Canada, starting around 16 minutes in, when he informed the startled reporters that he had closed the US-Mexican border a couple of days earlier. Startled, I mean, because if he had done that they thought they probably would have heard about it, And of course they hadn't....

I. Closing the Border

Actually two days ago
we closed the border.
We actually just closed it.
We said nobody’s coming in
because it was out of control.
You take a look at Tijuana Mexico
and see what's happening there
it's really a bad situation.

Literary Corner: Gestating the Turkey

Image by Getty via Mirror.

Sonnet: Eight-Hour Turkey

by Donald J. Trump

I have tremendous respect for China. I mean,
the energy, the genius… it's incredible what
they have done. We can't do it, it's got to be
a two-way street. We have only one-way streets.

You know what bothers me? I have people
coming to me, some people in Congress,
"Sir, can you get this deal done immediately?"
It's got to gestate. The word "gestate". 

Like when you are cooking a chicken. Time… Time…
Turkey for Thanksgiving. My mother would say eight hours.
I said, "Eight hours?" She made the greatest turkey
I ever had. It takes time. It takes time. So when they run
and say, "Can you do Nato right now, can you
sign it next week?" I say, "Wait a minute…"

Even a 30-pound turkey should not spend more than five and a half hours in the oven. At eight hours it will be a desolate inedible monster, a thing a rat or a raccoon wouldn't touch. Even mold won't eat it. Sort of like Jared's peace deal in the Middle East. As to China, I suppose if there were going to be a deal it would have been done by now. I'm not surprised some "people in Congress" have been bothering him about it. Soy farmers all over the country are facing huge losses. The Shanghai steel market is enjoying six-year highs, while American manufacturers who use steel in their products are facing unsustainable price increases. Maine's lobstermen are dying while the Chinese buy from Canada. Trump's deal is "gestating".

The only possible thing left is for Trump to retreat and go back to the status quo ante, to bury the "deal" in the backyard and apologize to all of us for his stupidity. And for the cabinet officers who helped him create this dessicated turd, criminal Wilber Ross and idiot Steven Mnuchin and crazed Peter Navarro, to resign. Oh, and Trump's a criminal too, if you hadn't heard about that, and he should resign too.

Managing the Emperor

Drawing by Marian Kamensky/Cartoon Movement, Octover 2017.

We have a question from The New York Times:

Trump Starts a Trade War, but Does He Have a Plan to Win It?

Spoiler alert: He doesn't have a plan. He never has a plan, from the chaos of MuslimBan 1.0 a week after inauguration to the ongoing chaos of the Central American parent-child separation program, and the people who work for him don't have a plan either, whether because they simply don't have the ability or because there's some problem with what Trump wants them to do, like Mexico really isn't going to pay for the wall. In a sense he's the true Underpants Gnome president:

• Phase one: Collect wall-building funds from Mexico
• Phase two: ?????????
• Phase three: Profit!!

What he has is a sense of how great he's going to look when he's successful, which is what he means by saying he "keeps his promises". He's going to look the way he told them he'd look, at the campaign rallies, and if the staff doesn't make him look that way they need to go.

Thus poor Pompeo, trying to work him through his fantasy of "solving" North Korea:

Scrutonizing America

Iconic representation of the trickle-down prose of Roger Scruton, via Luxury Fountains for Your Home.

Ten days ago David Brooks devoted one of his book-report segments to Roger Scruton, the somewhat important writer on aesthetics and damnfool English political writer, whose new book, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, is described by Joseph Hogan in The Nation as

less an intellectual history of conservatism than a brisk walking tour through its main hall. We hear from Aristotle, skip to Burke, Thomas Jefferson, and later get to T.S. Eliot, Buckley, Russell Kirk. These individual voices join in a chorus of custom-worship, of adoration for tradition and nonideological prudence. Jefferson is important to conservatives, we’re told, for his “insistence on continuity and custom as necessary conditions for successful constitution building.” Burke teaches us that “Real popular sovereignty…involves respect for what the people themselves respect—namely tradition, law and the narrative of legitimate order.” Throughout the book, Scruton makes little effort to clarify what these ideas have looked like—or, more importantly, could look like—in practice. One quickly realizes that the book introduces conservatism in the style of promotional material. In effect, Scruton has authored a 150-page pamphlet to be handed out to freshmen at Hillsdale College or at a Heritage Foundation conference table. 

Heh.

Bresurrexit?

It would be funny if Trump were to actually drive the UK back into the European Union:

The possibility of signing a trade agreement with the US was sold by Leave campaigners (and still is) as one of the big potential benefits of withdrawing from the EU. And, as a last resort, there was an assumption that the UK would be able to benefit from the baseline rules of the World Trade Organisation. But, in the current climate, those assumptions are being severely tested. Yesterday’s decision to increase tariffs is but the latest in a long line of protectionist measures adopted by a Trump presidency that is deeply distrustful of existing structures, which underpin the international trading system. (Billy Araujo Melo, MetroUK)

Image via BBC.

Not that it's going to happen, but if the Conservatives were smart, it could.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, [International Trade Secretart Liam] Fox said the UK was still seeking exemptions from the tariffs.

"We will still be making that case throughout this week," he said.

He added: "The United States believes, I believe wrongly and illegally, that this is a national security matter for the US.

"Given that we export some pretty complex steel products to the United States which are part of their national security programmes themselves, this reasoning that is given is wrong and therefore we believe unlawful."

Hatred for Trump is beginning to work as an international unifying factor. Kind of the way they used to feel about North Korea, in fact. You were always safe hating on the Kim of the day. Russians and Chinese pretended to care, you could tell they couldn't stand them as much as the rest of us. Nowadays South Koreans say pretty explicitly that whatever you say about the current Kim, and it's all true, he's still more reliable than Trump.

For the Record: Trump's Very Bad Day

And in case you didn't get a chance to notice,

#BREAKING: The victims of Donald Trump’s fraudulent university will finally receive the relief they deserve. A federal court just finalized our $25M Trump University settlement. pic.twitter.com/mBSJwgIY8i

— Eric Schneiderman (@AGSchneiderman) April 9, 2018

I didn't realize that was still pending in any way. "Your so-called lawyer got his office, apartment, and the hotel room he was staying in while his apartment was getting renoavated all raided by FBI agents looking for evidence of crimes of illegal campaign finance contributions, wire fraud, bank fraud, and by the way you need to write a check for $25 million to pay off all those people you defrauded back in 2010. Have another cheeseburger!"

Then there was this explosion quoted at TPM indicating that he's heard how the soybean and hog farmers feel about his trade war plans:

President Trump is Not Authorized to Speak for Himself

National Guard troops outside Hidalgo, TX, in 2011. AP photo via MPR.

Yesterday, in the wake of Trump's announcing to a press availability on Tuesday that he was pulling all the US troops out of Syria and "The White House" clarifying a few hours later that no, that was not in fact the case ("President Trump," they did not add, "is not authorized to speak for the Trump administration"), BooMan wrote,

He may be crazy and flat wrong on many details, but he is the president and if he wants to end our commitment to the region, you’d think that he could force a change in policy. But he can’t. Obama found himself handcuffed in some respects, too. If there is such a thing as the “deep state,” this is how it manifests itself. Even presidents have to bow to them on occasion.

I thought that was exaggerating both the existence of a "deep state" and this president's involvement in the government:

Because We're So Stupid: Mystery Maybe Solved

"Whaddaya mean they make cars in Canada? Where, for Christ's sake?" Image via Greenpeace.

I think I may have a fix on what happened (as discussed in yesterday's post, and thanks to a comment from Professor Fate) when Trump was enjoying himself telling the Missouri Republicans how he makes shit up the other day, if you bear with me for a minute here, starting with the fact that he's told the story about his brilliant defeat of Prime Minister Trudeau before, notably at the Pensacola rally in support of Roy Moore, December 8, via Toronto Globe and Mail:

"I like the prime minister very much. Prime Minister Trudeau. Nice guy. Good guy. No, I like him. But we had a meeting... He said, 'No, no, you have a trade surplus.' I said, 'No we don't.' He said, 'No, no you have a trade surplus,"' Trump told the Florida crowd.

"(Trudeau) said, 'I'm telling you that Canada has a deficit with the United States.' I told my people – in front of a lot of people – I said, 'Go out and check'."

He said his staff found Trudeau left out some key details, pertaining to trade in goods: "(Trudeau) was right. Except he forgot two categories: Lumber timber; and energy. Other than that, he was right. When you add them all together, we actually have a $17-billion deficit with Canada."

Literary Corner: Because We're So Stupid

Update here.

After blanking on the name “Canada”, U.S. President Donald Trump was overheard referring to Justin Trudeau as the “leader of the igloo people”, as the two met for crunch talks. The incident occurred during the President’s sit down meeting with the Prime Minister in the Oval Office. While Trump was commenting on how “great” the PM was, he paused mid sentence at: “And you’re honestly a terrific leader of…” Unaware that his microphone was on, or that everyone else in the room could easily hear him, Mr. Trump leaned over to his advisor Kellyanne Conway and whispered: “Ah, what do they call themselves again, those people,” Trump said while discreetly pointing upwards. “You know, up there where it’s cold,” he added, snapping his fingers. Before an alarmed looking Conway could respond, Trump bluttered, “the igloo people, is that it? He’s the leader of the igloo people, right?” (Satire, I should say, from the Burrard Street Journal. Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters.)

In the briefing I said I would provide the trade deficit number we have with Canada. In 2017 we had a $17.58 B trade deficit. In January 2018 we had a$3.63 B trade deficit. Both reflect trade in goods. Which is exactly what @POTUS referenced. https://t.co/PHm7hXdszD

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) March 15, 2018

I hate to tell you all, but she's almost right. Lying, but only over one nonsensical detail. Trump is not exactly making that up in his fundraiser speech for senatorial candidate Josh Hawley in St. Louis on Wednesday . Or he is, but he isn't lying: he's creating; he's not trying to tell his audience what happened as much as giving them the drama of how it felt. He's messing it up in a very odd way, too, but that's another matter. There's just one real lie in his account, which Sarah is lying about in turn in a more calculated and yet brazen way. But Trump is like Herodotus, giving you the sting and the rush of it:

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:

Literary Corner: Assembled from the Unsaid

Lnadscape by Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942), from somebody's Pinterest again.

Poetry about President Trump, as opposed to poetry by him, is inevitably a kind of nature poetry, a study in rapid atmospheric shifts. Here, the Secretary of Commerce, one of the president's Palm Beach neighbors and a former owner of the Bank of Cyprus, tries to capture for press reporters the feeling of wondering whether the United States will be plunged next week into a trade war with some of its closest allies (Canada, South Korea, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates, one of the main US sources for aluminum, I'll bet you didn't know that, on which a 10% import duty will be imposed, if it is raised at all, unless Trump decides to make it some other number, or make an exception for the UAE in recognition of their generous support for his son-in-law in this time of financial troubles, unless he wants to punish them for doing that because it's made him uncomfortable, or because they failed to cut him in), in delicate and mysterious brushstrokes in a tone that, as always seems to be the case with the Secretary, seems composed out of erasures, assembled from the unsaid.

Prophecy

by Wilbur Ross

Whatever his final
decision is is what
will happen. What he has
said he has said; if he
says something different,
it will be something
different. The president
has announced that this will
happen this week. I have no
reason to think otherwise.

(Text from NBC News)

Democratic senators wrote to Ross in February [2017] demanding that he disclose “the full extent of your connections to Russia”. Ross did not respond. The senators also lambasted the White House for refusing to provide answers to the questions before the vote confirming Ross.

Asked around that time whether Bank of Cyprus [of which Ross led the billion-dollar takeover from Dmitry Rybolovlev, another Palm Beach neighbor, in 2014] had any customers under US sanctions during his time there, Ross told CNN: “That’s a question that is very complicated to answer,” adding that he had never approved any such deals. [Guardian]

Trading Places

Via Indusrtrial Workers of the World.

I dared to address Loomis on this subject, for the first time since the TPP debacle, when he started suggesting that Democrats might be protesting against Trump's proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum for the wrong reason:

Does it strike you how etymologically bizarre that is, objecting to the way "liberals" "start" to defend "free trade"? I thought the simple problem with tariffs on solar cells and now iron and aluminum was that they'd clearly cost far more jobs than they saved, but.....

— YastronomicalOdds (@Yastreblyansky) March 3, 2018

With the thought that whatever "liberal" has meant from the 1850s until now has some kind of connecting thread in it, like the idea that there's an intrinsic value in generosity and offering others latitude, whether it's in poor relief or encouraging people from other countries to try to sell stuff in yours (Hayekian liberalism or neoliberalism in the strict sense being about being generous and latitudinarian with yourself, and the hell with other people).

Davos, Man!

Some of Davos from the Snow Train. Check that out, it's a video!

Mr. Bret Stephens ("Davos Man Meets America First", a grammatically peculiar headline) trots out the old Bill Safire device of speaking for the leader in what he hopes sounds like an impression of the leader's voice, with what's introduced as a leaked text of the keynote address Trumpy's going to give to the World Economic Forum in Davos, only with a complex Trumpian wrinkle, not in the strangled cadence in which Stephen Miller has (I presume) written it, but at he imagines Trump might have written a speech himself, with all the "like"s and "believe me"s written in in advance, and the cheery tone of one of his rally speeches instead of Miller's characteristic paranoid gloom. But Stephens makes a ponderous clown, and he mucks up the parody something terrible, with polysyllables and elaborately if not elegantly structured sentences studded with parentheses:

Fellow plutocrats!

I know you’re as glad to see me as I am to see you. No, really. Like, I know you voted for Trump. Or maybe you didn’t vote for me, because your wives, if you had voted for me, they’d withhold sex. But, when I won, in your hearts, you were very happy. And now you’re all so much richer, and your wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever — I’m a very tolerant person — they aren’t withholding, probably.

Am I right? I’m right.

And the idea of Trump publicly acknowledging that women hate him so much they'd go on a sex strike to stop him being elected! That will never happen, though Stephens's hypothesis that a sex strike took place could be true, for all I know. Though it's certainly realistic to picture him assuming everybody in the audience is a man and a US citizen/voter (there won't be anybody from the shithole countries, because they've all decided to walk out, and good for them), and that everybody's getting lots of sex out of the ongoing equities bubble, but then maybe that's Stephens as well.