The Sins of Conservatism

In my ongoing rants against -Isms, I came across a tweet back in May 2022, realized I was due to rant about this, then got distracted by other news cycles, and kept referring back to this while expanding my -Isms outrage into a book project:

 

I need to fcking tag this quote. https://t.co/Xvl5LXlxx1

— Witty Librarian For Ukraine (@PaulWartenberg) May 5, 2022

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham's Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...

That interpretation of Conservatism by Frank Wilhoit was pretty much spot on, but confusion rose up as to which Frank Wilhoit it was. Early interpretation was that it was (Francis) Wilhoit the political sciences professor, but instead it turned out to be Wilhoit the musical composer (who also posts comments on a lot of blogs including this one, hi Frank!).

Wilhoit the Composer may not be a certified expert on politics like Wilhoit the Professor, but his insight on Conservatism fits absolutely everything we've seen out of Conservatives since... well, the dawn of American politics.

If I'm bringing this back up now, a year later in 2023, it's because we're at yet another moment where American Conservatives - represented today by the Republican Party - are poised to wreak economic and social cruelty across every corner of the nation.

Right now, a lot of Republican-controlled states are passing anti-abortion laws that would punish women and doctors for even natural miscarriages, and forcing women to suffer through medical crises that could kill them. The Republicans are passing gender laws to punish trans teens (and even adults) as well as force gay/lesbian teens to hide from public view, all to uphold their conservative "gender role" bullshit. Republicans are ensuring easier access to firearms and easier public displays of guns especially around children, ensuring more gun violence and fear in our streets. 

At the federal level, the Far Right factions controlling the House GOP are making demands on Biden's administration to gut his own infrastructure and spending bills passed last year, putting chainsaws to Social Security and Medicare, and insisting on making the massive deficit-inducing tax cuts for the rich the GOP passed in 2017 are made permanent (they're set to expire in 2025 I believe). Otherwise they'll use the Debt Ceiling hostage AGAIN to force the U.S. government to default (causing a global economic meltdown).

And I'm not even getting into the viciousness the Conservatives aim at immigrants.

None of these things, by the way, are popular with the majority of Americans. Most Americans are okay with women having the right to choose. Most Americans are okay with gays and lesbians nowadays - having shifted to acceptance under Obama - and don't want to see trans teens abused by the states. Most Americans want gun reforms like universal background checks, safety locks to protect kids, and bans of military-grade assault rifles. Most Americans don't want tax cuts for the rich, Most Americans do want the social safety net working, and Most Americans don't want a public default to kill the global economy. 

Which is the problem with modern Conservatism. As Wilhoit noted, conservatives don't care what the majority wants, they care what they want at the expense of that majority.

Jamelle Boule at the New York Times spelled it out as the Four (Anti-)Freedoms (link provided as a gift, this may be temporary):

...All across the country, Republicans have passed laws to do exactly that wherever they have the power to do so, regardless of public opinion in their states or anywhere else. The war on bodily autonomy is a critical project for nearly the entire G.O.P., pursued with dedication by Republicans from the lowliest state legislator to the party’s powerful functionaries on the Supreme Court.

You might even say that in the absence of a national leader with a coherent ideology and agenda, the actions of Republican-led states and legislatures provide the best guide to what the Republican Party wants to do and the best insight into the society it hopes to build...

There is the push to free business from the suffocating grasp of child labor laws. Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio have advanced legislation to make it easier for children as young as 14 to work more hours, work without a permit and be subjected to more dangerous working conditions...

Elsewhere in the country, Republican-led legislatures are placing harsh limits on what teachers and other educators can say in the classroom about American history or the existence of L.G.B.T.Q. people. This week in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans discussion in general education courses at public institutions of “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.” He also signed a bill that prohibits state colleges and universities from spending on diversity, equity and inclusion programs beyond what is necessary to retain accreditation as educational institutions...

Last but certainly not least is the Republican effort to make civil society a shooting gallery. Since 2003, Republicans in 25 states have introduced and passed so-called constitutional carry laws, which allow residents to have concealed weapons in public without a permit. In most of those states, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, it is also legal to openly carry a firearm in public without a permit...

What should we make of all this? In his 1941 State of the Union address, Franklin Roosevelt said there was “nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy” and that he, along with the nation, looked forward to “a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.” Famously, those freedoms were the “freedom of speech and expression,” the “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way,” the “freedom from want” and the “freedom from fear.” Those freedoms were the guiding lights of his New Deal, and they remained the guiding lights of his administration through the trials of World War II.

There are, I think, four freedoms we can glean from the Republican program.

There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.

There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.

There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.

And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.

Roosevelt’s four freedoms were the building blocks of a humane society — a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one, in which you can either dominate or be dominated...

Again, fitting Wilhoit's original observation: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...

How did America's Conservativism even reach this point? Through long hard work, that's how. Decades of building up an agenda to achieve political power and then keep it at the expense of those they oppose. 

I've noted this before, when Conservatism in the United States early on bent to the whims and needs of the upper-class slaveowners of the South, who as a major faction in the Democratic Party pushed and fought against the more liberal ideologies - like the newly formed Republicans in the 1850s that called for abolition of slavery - to where they ruled and ruined the federal government into Civil War. 

For a time post-War conservativism was split between economic and social beliefs, uniting to maintain Jim Crow segregation but otherwise without a coherent banner to rally around. However, the dynamics of the liberal New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the rise and strength of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and international pressures of the Cold War forced the conservatives to gain a foothold in the 1960s to the Republican Party as reimagined by Barry Goldwater, and brought to power by 1980 by Ronald Reagan. A radical shift within the parties by the 2000s - pushed by the first stage of the Culture War in 1992 - made Republicans into hard conservatives with almost no true Moderate or Liberal left among their ranks, making it so much easier for the modern Republican Party to fulfill Wilhoit's definition.

Making it worse in all this was how Reagan brought to the Conservative movement the religious evangelicals - something even Goldwater refused to do - empowering the Republicans into an absolutist, God-given belief structure that doubles down on the "We are the TRUE Americans and all power should be OURS" world-view turning this into a power struggle between the "righteous" and the "dread Other" who must be purged from the (Christian) national body like a disease. Never mind the corruption and violence that comes with such a world-view.

If Conservatism is so corrupting, so prone to self-empowering to the point of self-destruction, so intent on denying any power-sharing (or wealth-sharing) with others to where it never holds a true majority of people, how can it still be popular enough to hold any semblance of power in the first place?

Well obviously, Conservativism appeals to those who seek power and influence and wealth. They will buy into such an -Ism in the hopes they will profit from being in the elite few. This is why you will see women, Blacks, Latinos, other ethnic and gender minorities align themselves to a conservative movement that would deny basic human rights to their own. Because they believe they are in - or can conform to - the upper class - an elite made of money, of celebrity - protected by other conservatives.

But how can such Conservatism - defined by that elitist world-view - appeal to those still outside of that upper elite class? Why are there a vast number of those in poverty - such as the rural regions of the Midwest or the Deep South - in the lower classes still willing to vote for something against their own economic and legal interests?

Because that Conservatism still tells those among the lower classes that their social status - defined by racial ethnicity - grants them higher standing over others in the same economic levels. Yes, the low-income voters making up the Republican Conservative base are driven by racism, and that's what empowers the Culture War cruelty that the Republican leaders are inflicting on their own states.

The shortest, most polite way to describe Conservatism in America: It is a sociological, economic, and political philosophy that insists on maintaining a racist Status Quo that benefits those on the "right" side of the racist dividing line (White, Male, and/or Rich, preferably all three).

There's a lot more to be said about Conservatism - for one, I would argue against Wilhoit's point that there are no other philosophies, because I believe Conservatism is a reaction against Liberalism - but that's where my book project comes into play. More on that hopefully later when I find time to effing write it past the outline stage (the research is mostly done).

One of the things I argue about -Isms is how they are competing and oft-times conflicting ideologies, burdened by the reality that all of them can be wrong about the Human Condition in any given moment but will insist on being absolutely right. Conservatism is no different: It will insist on its own philosophical purity while ignoring the damage it does even to its own adherents.

The problem with modern Conservatism - at least here in the United States - is that conservatives are fully aware of the damage they can do and still push their agenda. The whole argument of "The Cruelty Is The Point", and what Boulle details as the Republican agenda to grant only themselves the Freedoms for their own power, proves how dangerous this -Ism has become.

Truss is Toast, But Where Does That Leave the UK?

It's a bit worse than that. After my check-in with British politics showing Prime Minister Liz Truss - barely a month into her tenure - facing collapse of her government already, Truss was measured up to a head of lettuce - to see if a fresh head of lettuce could outlast her - and failed, miserably (via Helen Lewis at the Atlantic):

...Six days ago, Liz Truss’s leadership was in such trouble that a British tabloid began a livestream to test a simple proposition: Could the shelf life of a supermarket vegetable outlast her time as prime minister?

Today, the lettuce looked a little bruised, but it could still be incorporated into a healthy salad. Sadly, Liz Truss serves no such useful purpose. At 1:30 p.m. London time, she announced that she was leaving office. Her replacement will be elected next week.

The saga of Liz and the lettuce tells us many things about British political culture, one of which is its taste for lousy jokes. How was the Brexiteer Liz Truss brought down? A Romaine plot. Why did she make so many mistakes? Just cos. Was her decision to give a tax cut to the rich her fatal error? No, it was just the tip of the iceberg. Be thankful there aren’t more varieties of lettuce...

What went wrong? As I wrote earlier this week, everything. Her economic plans made the markets shudder. Her staffing decisions alienated her colleagues. Her poll numbers suggested that the Conservatives were heading for an electoral wipeout. Britain’s economic situation is extremely precarious: Inflation is higher than 10 percent, food banks are warning about elevated demand, and there is a small possibility of electricity blackouts over the winter. Yet despite the widespread fear these things engender, in the end, so much went wrong for Truss that people kept telling me they felt sorry for her. She was absolutely hopeless...

It's been noted that in reference to the short career of Scaramucci (11 days), Liz Truss lasted about 4 Scaramuccis. Hardly the best thing for her resume. Truss' tenure was so short the political biographies on her getting rushed out to the bookstores for Christmas are already obsolete.

That all said, the question now is "Who is foolish enough to replace her as Prime Minister?"

I mentioned this in the last article: This whole fiasco "...Exposes the Conservatives with the painful reality that they have ousted two Prime Ministers within within 6 months of each other, and creating a leadership crisis among factions who are fighting amongst themselves for high office. A situation that will consume the next unlucky soul who signs up as PM because their party's Brexit platform will condemn that fool to more failure."

In a horrifying development, Boris Johnson is eyeing a return to the job that his own party drove him from three months ago. He still has a fanbase within the Tory ranks, even though enough of the Conservatives were sick of Boris' constant scandalous behavior and constant lying. It's as though Boris is thinking "Well, they've seen the worst of what my replacement Liz has done, surely they will forgive me and bring me back to power."

That is, of course, utter madness (and a terrifying sign of Boris' narcissism). One of the reasons the Conservatives are down in the polls is the loss of trust that happened on Johnson's watch. There are no signs that the British voters are willing to forgive Boris for his failures getting his Brexit plans to work, and especially not about to forgive him for his mishandling of the COVID pandemic and the self-serving scandals that doomed him.

When Boris faced his No Confidence vote in June 2022, it was followed by a series of party-breaking resignations that threatened to gut his Cabinet and wreck whatever government he could form, which drove him to resign (although he took all summer to do so). There are no signs that Boris can form a new government today. The Tories themselves are so divided by factions that if Boris forces himself back into the big chair that one of those factions will split off and wreck the weakening Conservative majority, forcing a special election now instead of 2024.

Even if it isn't Boris retaking 10 Downing Street, whomever does get the job faces the same problem of either major faction - either the Ultra Brexits who want their utopia, or the moderates looking to rebuild a trade deal with the European Union that could regain some economic stability (what a Soft Brexit could have been) - splitting off out of sheer spite. Whatever happens, this current situation is untenable, but the Conservatives are so bound to their Brexit fantasies that they cannot stop themselves.

This clown car is still falling off the cliff, everybody. It's a question of how sharp the jagged rocks are below.

London Burning (And the Heat Wave Is Only One Reason Why)

When last we checked in on the United Kingdom, a lot has changed.

For starters, there's a new Doctor Who announced as Jodie Whittaker wraps up her tenure as the first official female Doctor. It'll be Ncuti Gatwa stepping up - Good Lord, he's younger (born 1992) than my flip-flops (bought 1991) - to take on the Fourteenth Doctor (which may not be the fourteenth regeneration, they're starting to really wibbly-wobbly with the Doctor's already messy origin story).

Let's see, um, there's been big news in women's soccer oh right football to the European continent. The Lionesses rule!

There's been a brutal heatwave across the UK, as well as much of Europe. It's bad enough that airport tarmacs and roads are melting back into tar.

Oh, and the Tories finally had enough of Boris Johnson's scandal-paloozas and forced him to resign as Prime Minister (although being the cheating git he is, he won't leave until September and even then may back out of it).

The last big scandal Boris was mishandling was the Partygate Affair at the beginning of the year, where his administration ignored the COVID-19 protocols they were enforcing on everyone else. While he skated in public, due to putting a clamp down on the official report before it got completely out, he faced turmoil among his fellow Conservative Tories ranks. A party Vote of No Confidence got called back in June.

Even with Boris surviving that No Confidence vote, the fact it even happened is usually a sign the PM isn't going to last another year. Margaret Thatcher faced a No Confidence, Theresa May faced a No Confidence, and while they both survived they resigned within a year because further intraparty conflicts made their positions untenable.

And Boris only got 59 percent support where Maggie had 84 percent and Theresa 68 percent. He may have been on a lifeboat, but it had 41 leaks already and was sinking like a miniature Titanic.

All it would take was one more scandal - one wafer thin mint of a headache - and it came with the aptly named MP Pincher getting caught a little "hands on" with other members of a social club. As stories of Pincher's behavior going back years got out, Boris Johnson publicly proclaimed he and his government hadn't heard of those stories... except it turned out Boris himself was warned even as he promoted Pincher to a high position.

Basically, Boris had been caught in yet another lie.

This was a problem with him even back in 2019, when I covered his rise to the Prime Minister's post. I relied on Sam Knight's reporting from the New Yorker so let's refer back to that again: 

This is the Johnsonian way. The lies, the performative phrases, the layers of persona—they accrete, one on top of another, flecked here and there with Latin, until everyone has forgotten what the big deal was... In 2001, at the age of thirty-six, Johnson was elected a Member of Parliament for Henley, a safe Conservative seat in Oxfordshire. When he came under pressure to resign from The Spectator, because of the conflict of interest, he demurred, and coined what has become his best-known political aphorism: “I want to have my cake and eat it.” Johnson hates choosing between things, even right and wrong... 

One of the undercurrents of Knight's story was how Boris pushed his persona and his political stances not with facts but with half-truths and empty promises (the title of Knight's article). The Brexit campaign in 2016, in alliance with other anti-EU fringe groups, was the culmination of Johnson's efforts:

At first, Johnson promised that he would not take a high-profile role in the Brexit campaign—or criticize Conservatives who were backing Remain—but that pledge lasted only a few days. The referendum debate was made for him. It pitched the government, which was boring, cautious, and cognizant of the flaws in Britain’s relationship with the E.U., against the Brexiteers, whose very name carried a whiff of japes and derring-do. While Cameron and his loyal ministers presented fact sheets warning of the economic and political risks of Brexit, Johnson and the gang toured the country in a bright-red bus, waving asparagus (to promote British farming) and promising to return three hundred and fifty million pounds a week to the National Health Service, which was a lie...

The jolly feel around Johnson enables him to air sinister ideas and dodge the consequences. When Barack Obama told reporters that Brexit would hurt the U.K.’s trading prospects, Johnson wrote a column referring to “the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire.” (Johnson has also written of “crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies” with their “watermelon smiles,” in Africa, and described Muslim women wearing niqabs as “letter boxes.”) At a climactic TV debate between Leave and Remain figures, on the last day of the campaign, Johnson adopted a line—previously used by Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party and now the Brexit Party leader—describing the day of the referendum as Britain’s independence day, a nationalist slogan that brought the house down...

And yet, all those lies Boris spilled had (still have) consequences: The Leave Vote forced then-PM Cameron to resign (Never the smartest or best Tory leader ever, even he knew exactly what the damage would be and fled before he could get held accountable himself). It created a leadership crisis among the Tories that Boris could have easily filled in that moment but even he faltered, overwhelmed by the immenseness of the damage he himself caused. For a politician who never really figured out an agenda other than to fulfill his own crass desires, he still stayed afloat because no one else - especially after Theresa May tried and failed multiple times - could complete the disaster that a full No-Deal Brexit would bring to the nation.

As much as Republicans in the colonies United States have to cope with the reality that their leader donald trump is a consistent (and terrible) liar, the Tories back in "this earth this realm this England" had to cope with the reality Boris is a consistent (and terrible) liar as well. Everyone saw this was coming and still the Conservatives had no one else to turn to. As Helen Lewis over at the Atlantic (paywalled) noted:

As I said, though, this was a long road to an inevitable end point. For years, Johnson has been making his aides and supporters look stupid by sending them out to peddle lines that turn out to be untrue. Back in July 2019—that last blessed pre-pandemic summer—Johnson was the favorite to win the Conservative Party leadership election, and thus to become Britain’s next prime minister, and I had just joined a magazine you might have heard of called The Atlantic. My second-ever Atlantic article explored an arresting modern phenomenon: the political outriders forced to humiliate themselves on behalf of charismatic, chaotic leaders. Think of all the Republicans who thought that, surely, Donald Trump wouldn’t lie to them...

These contortions could be attributed to “Johnson’s own vagueness and hatred of commitment,” as I wrote at the time. But there was a shorter word for the problem. Boris Johnson lies...

Or as noted by Jonathan Freedland over at The Guardian:

Lies and a brazen contempt for the rules powered his rise; lies and a brazen contempt for the rules brought his fall. Which means the political odyssey of Boris Johnson has a curious symmetry. Except that what began as defects in the personality of one man ended as defects in his party and his government, inflicting great damage on the entire country...

None of this was a surprise, because dishonesty has been the one constant through Johnson’s career. Famously, he was sacked from his first job, at the Times, for making up a quote, and later he was sacked from Michael Howard’s frontbench for lying to the then party leader about an affair...

Ordinarily, a reputation for serial deceit would close off the route to the top, or at least prove an impediment. Yet for Johnson it proved no obstacle at all. On the contrary, his route to No 10 was smoothed with lies. How come? What were the forces that propelled a man whose flaws were so clear and well documented into the most powerful job in the land...?

He turned the Tory party away from the values it once held dear, so that Johnson’s party cheerfully jeopardized the union, tramped on parliamentary sovereignty and even insulted the monarchy. He purged it of some of its best people and debased several of the great offices of state by filling them with obvious incompetents. Above all, he drained what remained of the public reservoir of trust.

In the spring of 2020, Britons were ready to follow their prime minister into a long period of collective self-discipline, even at the expense of hardship and emotional pain. They did it because they believed him when he said we would all be doing it, every last one of us. The Queen believed it, which is why she sat alone as she buried her husband of 73 years. But it was not true.

That will leave its own legacy, in distrust and cynicism that will endure long after Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street, his brief but toxic spell in the office he craved since childhood finally over...

Deceitful leadership from the Tories. From Conservatives in general, when you lump them in with trump's deceitful following here in the States. All to extend their political power at the expense of the realities that didn't fit their narratives: To the U.S. under trump, the falsehood of "Making America Great Again" with tariff wars, punishing minorities, and dragging the nation into a theocratic Stone Age; To the Brits under Johnson, the falsehood of freeing themselves from the EU with broken promises, a dysfunctional border system, and the likelihood of both Scotland AND Northern Ireland leaving the UK as Brexit ruins their local economies.

I should stop throwing in trump as a comparative model: This should be focusing more on the damage Boris Johnson is leaving behind when he departs (unless he tries to pull off another stunt and cancel his resignation). One last referral to the always-excellent Brexit & Beyond blog by Chris Grey: 

As the dust begins to settle on Boris Johnson’s downfall, it’s worth emphasizing that it was inextricably bound up with Brexit even though Brexit wasn’t its direct cause. Unusually and fittingly, it was his character and conduct rather than any particular policy which ended his premiership. Not, I think, because the Tory Party had some collective outbreak of moral rectitude – they all knew what Johnson was like from the outset – but more because the thumping loss of two by-elections demonstrated that the voters were finally starting to see through him, in large part because of ‘partygate’.

In some ways that’s a good thing. It arguably shows that, eventually and creakingly, the British polity still has some kind of moral compass. But it also means that, even though it ought to be, this is not a moment of reckoning for the Brexit he did so much to promote and shape...

Yet in truth, Johnson’s deficiencies of character are inseparable from Brexit. He was far from the only liar in 2016, but the casual and brazen dishonesty with which he fronted Vote Leave certainly embodied and perhaps swung its campaign. He even embodied many of the particular hues of that dishonesty, in his insistence not just that facts don’t matter but that belief matters more, in his endless sense of his own victimhood, still on display in his resignation announcement and mirroring that of the Brexiters generally, in his refusal to take responsibility for his choices even to the extent of denying choices have to be made, and in his constant bogus and half-baked invocations of the Second World War...

It's now widely accepted, including, if only superficially, by most of the candidates to succeed him, that Johnson’s legacy is a constitution and political culture horribly damaged by dishonesty and immorality, with accompanying public distrust and cynicism. But simply laying this at the door of his own character, without recognizing its roots in Brexit, means it will not be addressed.

There’s actually an even wider point to be made. The referendum didn’t just result in leaving the EU. It also created a massive and ongoing destabilization of British politics. It is not coincidence that we have had two general elections and are about to have the fourth Prime Minister in the space of just six years. That is astonishing in itself, but what is far more astonishing is that at each of the pivotal moments – the general elections and the leadership elections – Brexit itself was only discussed in the most cursory of ways.

This may seem a strange thing to say given how dominant an issue Brexit has been since 2016, but my point is that it has rarely, if ever, been talked about in depth, spelling out its actual practical implications and the choices and trade-offs involved...

So neither at these decisive points nor in the periods between them has there ever been any sustained, honest, realistic political conversation about the practical realities of Brexit. Instead, throughout the May years there were suggestions of securing ‘frictionless trade’ and the ‘exact same benefits’ of membership and in the Johnson years the claim of cakeism and denial of the coming costs, with Labour all the while just talking vaguely of the ‘better deal’ they would achieve. Equally, throughout these years there was virtually no honesty about the actual choices and problems posed by and for Northern Ireland. Instead there was endless nonsense about non-existent ‘alternative arrangements’ and, ultimately, the creation of an Irish Sea border whilst denying that that was what had been agreed. Thereafter, since the end of the transition the political silence about the damaging effects of Brexit has been deafening, whilst all the denial and dishonesty about Northern Ireland has been re-activated...

Boris may be getting kicked out of the Prime Minister's chair, but the damage his efforts to push and achieve Brexit remain ongoing. Not so much because Boris is still lying about Brexit - he is - it's because the rest of the political leadership in the United Kingdom are still lying to themselves about the far-reaching implications that they're stuck with.

Whoever is going to be the next Prime Minister is going to inherit the lies and delusions of Boris' false narratives, and it's not going to end pretty for them either. 

All of London - all of the UK - is going to keep burning hotter than hell for anyone inheriting No. 10 Downing Street.

Brexit Madness Overdrive

I had a boss once who kept warning me "Madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result." I have to admit I didn't even see what it was I was doing wrong and what I needed to change, but I understand what she was talking about.

That noted, I look at the United Kingdom right now and (via Joshua Alvarez at the Washington Monthly):

(Prime Minister Theresa) May is expected to put her negotiated deal up for a third vote this week. But even that faces its own legal hurdle. On Monday, House of Commons Speaker John Bercow ruled out a third vote on May’s deal, citing a procedural rule prohibiting the same question from being repeatedly brought forward during the same parliamentary session. No word yet on how May will overcome that, but let’s assume that the vote will happen. Almost certainly, the deal will be rejected again.

On March 13, Parliament twice voted (in a non-binding way) that the UK should not leave the EU without an agreement. Amid the din of Parliament’s Hamlet-like indecisiveness, Donald Tusk’s January tweet has a ghostly echo: “If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?”

What we're seeing is a Conservative Party that has spent decades hating being a part of the EU but had really no plan on how to reasonably exit that economic cooperative, but they HATE the EU so much they can't admit they've painted themselves into a corner and are stuck in Suicide Over The White Cliffs Of Dover Mode. They want Brexit but they can't deal.

This is what blind partisanship looks like, by the way. A more pragmatic leadership would have had something in fucking place for all this shit before they voted for the damn thing.

But now the British Parliament is stuck with an April 12th deadline - they were able to deal for an extension from March 29, but the EU wants England to make up its damn mind before their own membership elections - and they are down to two options. Take May's terrible Brexit deal that the hardliners see as too Soft and the Remainers see as too Hard, or settle for a No-Deal Brexit that pretty much blows up every aspect of the UK economy, kills the peace deal between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and essentially ships off more than ONE TRILLION British Pounds off-shore permanently.

Meanwhile, the streets of London filled up with a million (maybe two mill) residents protesting the Tories' effort to Leave, demanding a second referendum - because 1) they were lied to by Farage and the other Leave advocates 2) no one realized what the real consequences would be until it started happening and most Brits don't like it now - and for Parliament to just cancel the Article 50 altogether.

Check out the crowds:

I have no seen comparable marchers demanding the UK continue its Leave course. I found this, from a planned march a week ago for a "Leave Means Leave" movement but look at it, there are more cops than marchers at one point:

May might not even last until April 12 (via Dan Sabbagh at the Guardian):

With the prime minister preparing to meet a group of senior Tory rebels at her Chequers country retreat, the chancellor told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that Conservative colleagues were “very frustrated” and “desperate to find a way forward.”

But as two ministers who had been named as possible interim successors, Michael Gove and David Lidington, played down speculation about the prime minister’s future, Hammond said that talk of pushing May out was “frankly self-indulgent at this time.”

The chancellor – who had been named as one of a group plotting to force her out in a crunch cabinet meeting on Monday – refused to be drawn on whether his colleagues had approached him asking him to intervene...

Cabinet anxieties about May and her ability to maintain control of the stalled Brexit process remain acute, with few in Westminster believing she can get a revised version of her deal through the Commons in the coming days.

Duncan Smith said the idea of a coup “would be unacceptable to my colleagues” and accused cabinet members of breaching collective responsibility by briefing against May...

At this point, let's be honest Tories. YOU dug this hole for yourselves. Your leadership in Cameron recklessly put up an ill-thought referendum without putting any safeguards in place should it pass, and now you're all in cleanup mode... but instead of cleaning up you're digging deeper. There's your sign of madness, Britons.

Blowing up Parliament - no, not like Fawkes! - is the only sane move to make right now. Either admit Brexit is a bad idea and cancel it and deal with the wrath of your (shrinking) Leave constituency, or plunge your whole island kingdom into chaos and economic failure.

Either way, you're fucked Tories. At least take the hit so your people won't have to.

A Statement On Core Principles

So, when it comes down to it, what are the issues I care about the most? On what hills will I stand and fight to ensure those beliefs remain core components of the United States I believe in?

My core principles on key political issues:

1. The rich, and large corporate entities, should be taxed at a higher rate than middle-income and low-income Americans to ensure fairness in the tax burden. This includes rigorous enforcement of upper incomes and large corporations to stop tax evasion.
2. Businesses must be regulated to ensure workplace safety, clean environments, fair access to products and services, high pay and benefits equal to the work performed, and consumer / community protection from any form of fraud.
3. All Americans 18 and older have the right to vote and shall not be blocked, suppressed, or denied their right to vote. Registration must be free and universal to all citizens. If imprisoned, Americans shall immediately regain their right to vote once their sentences are served or are on parole.
4. All Americans provided affordable healthcare across the board as a human right.
5. All Americans provided free public education for children, and affordable public education for all those of college age, as a human right
6. All Americans given personal control of their bodies and health with regards to reproductive rights, meaning affordable and unhindered access to birth control, women’s healthcare services, and abortion as a medical right.
7. All Americans have the right to know that the federal, state, and local governments that represent them are not committing crimes and human rights abuses, and that any agent, official or elected representative committing such crimes be punished (meaning no statute of limitations on those persons).
8. Americans have the right to be protected from active, violent, and spiteful racism / sexism, where haters do NOT have the right to attack someone because of their skin color, their ethnic origin, their gender, their gender preference, or their religion. As much as this means everyone SHOULD be protected, in practice this means protecting the rights and safety of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, Jews, Hindi, Sikhs, Women, Gays, Trans, and other minorities from the hate groups that are predominately White Protestant (mostly Male) Assholes.
9. No radio personality or disk jockey shall speak over the opening, middle, or ending of a song. The next SOB who talks just as Pat Benatar starts whistling towards the end of “Love Is a Battlefield” will be executed with extreme prejudice. I don’t care if there’s just 30 seconds of the song left, I WANNA HEAR THE SONG NOT YOU.
10. No more lying in politics. All elected officials, candidates for office, and personnel hired to work for them or our government agencies shall be held to an ethical standard that will punish them for false, hypocritical, and misleading public statements. If you can’t speak truthfully and factually on a matter you can always say “No comment.”

This is what I want to see. This is what I hope for.

Does this make me liberal? Perhaps. But I look at Europe where liberalism and conservatism both agree roughly on public welfare matters like healthcare and education, so I don't think that is what's at issue here. I've seen some self-declared conservatives speak in favor of public schools and affordable healthcare, as well as speak for protecting the rights of minorities. It's not the issues themselves requiring extremism to defend or oppose.

What does matter is HOW such plans are enacted. To what degree can we support the public welfare? What's most sensible about regulating businesses for safe practices? THIS is where the ideological fights SHOULD be, where being a Big Letter Liberal and Big Letter Conservative and Big Letter Moderate would matter. This is where being the Liberal would seek massive support and broad freedoms, where the Conservative would be the skeptic honestly concerned about the costs, where the Moderate would find a pragmatic middle ground that would make the thing work as well and as long as possible. This is where I find myself as a Moderate: I want solutions that work and work well for the long term.

But this is where I split hard against Republicans. Where the Democrats - actively engaged among their own ranks between Centrist and Progressive stances - are amenable and solutions-oriented about the issues that matter to me (and hopefully most of you), the Republicans have gone Full Metal Dogmatic. 

The modern GOP -  reflecting not Conservative values but Reactionary values - does not want debate on ANY of those issues. The modern GOP is absolutely opposed to reasonable tax hikes on upper incomes, they want to slash-and-burn. They WANT to cut the social safety net to nothing. In practice at the state level I've seen Republicans gut funding for schools and teachers, and blocked improved funding for healthcare out of sheer spite. The Far Right wants to eliminate abortion (AND women's healthcare) as a safe practice, and oppose sensible affordable access to birth control not because they're pro-Life (they're not even that) but because they're pro-Judgment (they want to demean/control/depower women).

And dear GOD: The way the Republican Party acts towards Blacks and Latinos (and Muslims) should make any honest citizen sick to their stomachs.

The modern Republican Party wants to deny the rights - the right to vote, the right to learn, the right to LIVE - of every person who's NOT White, or Rich, or Male, or over the age of 50. That's all I see of that party anymore.

That's why I keep screaming FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

Because I have principles. And the Republican Party does not.

So What Exactly Is It About Trump That Terrifies The Republican Party?

So, as the freakout about a publicly-known con artist like Donald Trump becoming the likely nominee for President drives the Republican Party into open displays of panic and fear, a question is bound to come up.

Just WHY are the Republicans so terrified of Trump?

After all, Trump is doing absolutely everything expected of a Republican front-runner: he's bashing liberals as weak, Obama as evil, his opponents as failures. He's pandering to the GOP base on exactly the issues the Republicans have raised - illegal immigration, political correctness run amok, a broken bureaucracy, the conservative desire to punch hippies in the face - since the Clinton years. He's pushing a massive tax cut program that favors the rich. He's the buzz: everyone's talking about him. Even in politics, bad news is good PR if you spin it the right way.

But the Republicans - the "Establishment" faction as it were, the pro-Business "slightly saner" faction that tried over the last forty years to herd the religious and financial and social conservatives into a Reagan Big Tent juggernaut - are absolutely scared of Trump being the front-runner. They didn't want him, they wanted the likes of Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Chris Christie (and now John Kasich as the Last Best Hope).

Because the Republican Establishment - which had those three as well as many of the other would-be candidates for the White House - knew they could control those candidates and keep them in line.

Most of the would-be candidates, even Jeb, all are career politicians. Campaigning and making speeches and posing for photo ops is what they do for a living. They've paid their dues into the Republican social club, and they each owe the party a little something - their respect, their continued support, their fealty - for all that the party had done keeping them on the gravy train (and out of jail).

Trump is different in that he doesn't owe anybody anything within the Republican Party. He came in on his own, hell he was chased after for campaign funds and public endorsements and whatnot for years before today. In some respects there are enough players within the party ranks who owe him to a point where he can own them.

Trump doesn't have a career in politics to worry about. He can go back to being a bankrupt landlord and media gloryhound if he wants. This jump at the Presidency is a one-shot deal (it's one reason why he never ran for a lesser office to prove himself: any proof that he can't be effective in an elected job would have killed his shot at the Big Chair), and he's acting like he knows it by the way he's bulldozing down every form of civil behavior most politicians hold themselves to because they're thinking about the next job.

Trump doesn't have to worry about money in terms of fund-raising and sucking up to the party deep-pockets. He's even losing money doing all this, when you consider the lost deals and broken contracts in the wake of his insults and racist campaigning... all because he knows he can still con his way into similar deals down the line. That was one of the early signs that the RNC wasn't going to control him.

Just on those points alone there's a good reason why the GOP Establishment types are worried. The growing terror about Trump right now is coming from how Trump is shattering the illusions that enveloped the Republican leadership for the last thirty years. (This includes the mainstream media enablers of the Far Right who think they have influence within the halls of politics)

The panic is coming from people - not just the likes of the RNC leadership like Prince Rebus, uh Reince Priebus (I shouldn't rib him about that, I've got people misspeeling my name all the tyme...) or Mitt Romney, but also the self-proclaimed wise men of the columns like David Brooks and the National Review editor board - who suddenly discover that Trump is stirring up anger and rage among the Far Right voting base that no longer responds to the elites' attempts to control that voting base.

Despite the well-organized structure and singular agenda of the Republican Party, and despite the twenty-year push to purge the moderates and progressive forces of the GOP, there are still factions within the voting base itself that have to cooperate and get along for the party to win at the national level. While there's overlap between the pro-business tax-cuts-forever faction, the pro-fetus / evangelical faction, and the pro-bomb-our-enemies neocon faction, those are usually distinct groups with pet issues that need pandering in different ways.

Trump has disrupted all of that. He's wrangled out of those three factions a relatively new fourth: the Nativist / Populist faction, which cherry-picked the issues between all three existing factions and cast aside the issues that doesn't interest them. Trump's faction is openly racist in a way that the Republicans tried to ignore or excuse away through their use of dog-whistles, it's openly anti-trade and disdainful of the global economy in ways that scare the business leaders, and it's openly dismissive of abortion as a priority even as the faction expresses disdain towards women's health and women's issues. Mix in with all that the fact Trump's faction is violent and operates with a hair-trigger mob mentality, and the Republican Establishment is looking at a hostile, uncontrollable group they can neither wrangle back into their ranks nor ship out into exile.

And it's a faction that has grown larger than the existing factions within the ranks, meaning they can't overwhelm the Trump-ites by sheer numbers.

The Establishment leaders - reflected by the increasingly insane reactions and denials from their media cohorts - are showing signs of anxiety bordering on open fear. They're coping with a party that they no longer recognize, even though they've spent decades building the Republicans to be exactly what the party is today. It's like they didn't realize that forty years of demonizing everything that wasn't Rich White Male would create an army of racists.

This is what decades of self-fulfilling reality-warping does to a group of detached oligarchs. We saw smaller versions of this back in 2012, when Karl Rove and Mitt Romney and a lot of others in the GOP ranks convinced themselves they were beating Obama in the polls. That epic collapse of self-delusion on live television - when Rove had to be trout-slapped back into the real world over the Ohio ballot count going for Obama - was just a harbinger. The Epistemic Closure of the Republican leadership - by their media handlers, by their elected leaders in Congress and governors' offices, by their lobbyist buddies and deep-pocket funders buying up as much influence as they wanted - simply never paid any damn attention to what was happening in the Reality-Based Community they so easily dismissed during the Bush the Lesser years.

They've kept themselves in their boardroom meetings and country club golf courses and their television studio green rooms, isolated from their own base on the Far Right as much as they isolated themselves from the despised Far Left. They knew they were stirring up fear and anger among the masses: they just didn't care to know what the consequences would be.

That's why they're panicking now. It's about as much to do with the possibility of Trump leading their party to electoral disaster in November as it is about the possibility the Republican Establishment has lost a huge chunk of their voting base.

It's getting to the point where their "respectable voices" among their ranks are openly talking about forcing a Third Party run despite the fact that will clearly split the Right for the foreseeable future, perhaps decades. They may already be realizing it's too late, and they need to destroy the Beltway Village now in order to save it.

This would be tons of enjoyable schadenfreude, except for the fact that con artist Trump is still menacing the countryside like a monster run amok.

It's up to the Democrats to clean up after the f-cking Republicans. Again.

Who ARE These National Review People Anyway?

(Yes, I am playing up a joke from Hitchhikers' Guide To the Galaxy) (if you note the two earlier articles I just wrote)

So why should we - and by "we" I mean "sane moderates who dropped out of the Republican party when they went Too Far Wingnut" - even pay attention to the National Review, a political commentary magazine that spent most of its time from the 1950s promoting a hard Conservative line on taxes, on corporate business priorities, against "radical" social experimentation, for an aggressive pro-military foreign policy, and against fluffy bunnies?

Well, for starters, they print on very nice glossy paper.

Seriously, NR prides itself on presenting its Conservative agenda with an intellectual bent, that is with research, analytical reasoning, and using words with more than four syllables once every third paragraph. It is supposed to be a step above, say, Weekly Standard or the online Drudge Report.

So when National Review comes out in force against candidate Donald Trump - with an entire issue titled ironically enough "Against Trump" - Republican Conservatives are supposed to perk up their ears and pay attention.

Even though far too many Far Right base voters are already in Trump's corner and would likely view the NR attack as just another Establishment move against THEIR guy.

So why even bother?

The NR issue isn't really for Trump's supporters. In a lot of ways, they're already a lost cause. As a group, I doubt a majority of Trump backers ever read that magazine (they may have read the occasional link from Breitbert.com or Drudge to a NR article, but that's it). The editors should realize they won't reach those voters until well after all the tears and outrage have been shed.

No, this issue is a reminder to the ones the NR tries to influence more directly: the Republican Party leadership / deep-pocket backers who are starting to show signs of approving Trump's chances. There is buzz that the back-room types are warming up to Trump because the other likely candidate - Cruz - is just personally unlikable to the elites, and those elites think Trump will be a more malleable Presidential hopeful they can control (due to Trump's lack of experience, he would likely rely a lot on the party leadership IF he does win the White House).

In the face of that illogic, it makes sense that the National Review is trying to scare straight their plutocratic overlords, reminding them that Trump is too risky a candidate to back... even though the candidate NR seems to prefer is Cruz, which doesn't help their arguments.

On the bright side, at least NR isn't saying all that much about Jeb.

Some More of The National Review's Greatest Mistakes

(Didn't I just write a critique...?)

Just remember, the National Review thought Mitt Romney would win in 2012.

Where The National Review Went Wrong

(hat tip to Oolon Colluphid)

There's been a bit of chatter the last day or so about the National Review's attempt to nuke Donald Trump from orbit.

Mostly about how the special issue fails to do the job.

To quote Tom Scocca over on Gawker:

...The further one reads through the National Review’s anti-Trump pleadings, the more sense Beck’s participation makes. If (William F.) Buckley declared that his magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop,” the Trump package stands alongside history muttering “History? History, history... Hmm, nope, doesn’t ring a bell.” 

There are, at this point, two fairly straightforward thoughtful arguments that a conservative publication could make against the rise of Donald Trump. One would be a pragmatic or tactical one: Despite his theatrical contempt for liberal elites, Trump is unpredictable and insufficiently committed to the conservative movement’s plans and goals. Where a President Ted Cruz would fill the federal bench with names from a Federalist Society spreadsheet (or a spreadsheet Cruz himself had prepared for the Federalist Society), for all anyone knows, a President Trump might appoint Nancy Grace to the Supreme Court. That would surely make liberals mad, but it wouldn’t get the big job done.

This would have been a reasonable - as Scocca calls it "pragmatic" - attack on Trump's candidacy, because it highlights Trump's obvious lack of political experience. There IS honestly no guarantee or previous history in Trump's background to ensure he would adhere to the conservative values NR is supposed to champion.

The other argument that a conservative publication could make against the rise of Donald Trump would be an unsparing self-examination and self-criticism, reckoning with the currents of brutish populism that have run from Nixon through Reagan through George W. Bush to the present-day circus, and humbly apologizing for its role in creating them. Any real attempt to write Donald Trump out of the Republican Party needs to engage, head on, with the fact that Donald Trump is currently polling far ahead of the field with people who identify as Republican voters. What is the conservative movement if it is not the way that voters who identify as conservative are moving?...

This isn't likely to happen. The last twenty years have proven the Conservative elites are incapable of self-reflection and admission of failure. The last time I recall anyone from the Right side of the political spectrum apologizing like this is whenever a Republican Party official was forced to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for lack of fealty.

Reviewing even the first three or four articles of NR's "Against Trump" issue focuses too much on just Trump as a candidate as though he exists in a political vacuum. My readings of the articles rarely reveal any admission or examination about how Trump appeals to a large swath of "Conservative" Republican primary voters. The articles are too busy trying to define "what" the REAL Conservative voter should be (and which (Cruz) candidate (Cruz) such voters (Cruz) should support (I think the commentators are pushing Cruz)).

So, in short: National Review has the right idea - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE TRUMP - but lousy arguments.