O mores O tempores, eh, motherfucker? What a list, what a list, what a list. Oy vey, oy vey, oy vey. First and worst is elegantly bearded Harvard prick in chief Jack Goldsmith, whose motto is “not as bad as John Yoo”, which may or not be true, because John stabs you in the chest while Jack stabs you in the back. Jack is getting a lot of press from a very stupid piece he wrote for the New York Times, The Prosecution of Trump May Have Terrible Consequences. Ilya Somin, a Volokh Conspiracy stalwart and often AV-approved good guy, responded adroitly with this take, The Dangers of Giving Trump Impunity are Far Worse than those of Prosecuting Him, causing Jack to publish a response to Ilya and other critics in Lawfare, More on How to Think About the Costs of the Trump Election Fraud Prosecution, to which Ilya most politely and courteously replied in another post, Jack Goldsmith Responds to Critics on the Dangers of Prosecuting (or not Prosecuting) Trump for Trying to Overturn the 2020 Election. If you want a thorough, intelligent, well-mannered discussion of the clear and gaping fallacies present in Jack’s “argument” (I use the term loosely), you should read Ilya. If you want a deluge of unrestrained, deliberately offensive billingsgate, well, read on, because that’s my job.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s simply no reason to respond to Jack’s “arguments” in detail, because they are all of a piece, all of a very large piece of disingenuous bullshit. What is the purpose of anyone and everyone who finds, somewhere, under some hidden rock, in some forgotten corner, some reason for not prosecuting Trump for his outrageous misconduct during the leadup to the January 6, 2021 riot and its aftermath? They find it because they desperately want to “normalize” Trump, not to the extent of saying he’s guiltless—that would be pretty much impossible—but to at least normalize the events of January 6th. Notice that Jack’s second headline refers to “Trump’s Election Fraud Prosecution”. No, Jack, the trial isn’t about “election fraud”, which, after all, was what Trump was accusing the Democrats of doing. What Trump is accused of, and what Trump did, was out and out sedition, an attempt to overthrow the U.S. system of government, to deny office to the duly elected 46th president of the United States and instead illegally maintain himself in office.
Despite all the wishy-washy pronouncements by people like Reason’s Jake Sullum, it was Donald Trump’s crystal-clear intent—crystal-clear from the get-go—that he would prevent Joe Biden’s certification as president elect by Congress on January 6 “by any means necessary”—any means short of counseling outright violence, and, clearly, when violence did occur, he was delighted and sought eagerly to exploit it, as is also “crystal clear” from the testimony given by many of the people he talked to on that day, though of course they quickly “forgot” about it when they realized that the Republican masses still idolized him. Whether they will come clean on the witness stand will be “interesting” to observe.
Trump did this because he knew that if he could prevent Biden’s certification, he would have created an unprecedented situation—one of remarkable fluidity, during which a trifle might have momentous consequences. People like Goldsmith do not want to think about how close he came to achieving his goal. Pence could have caved and done Trump’s bidding. What then? As Pence has also pointed out, he made another crucial decision, to reject the Secret Service’s urging that he allow them to take him somewhere “safe”. As he pointed out, “I’d have ended up in North Dakota somewhere” (my paraphrase) and the certification would not have taken place. Two pipe bombs were planted near the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters the night before January 6th. What if they had gone off? The odds are very good that Biden would not have been certified. There has been widespread criticism of the lack of security. What if there was a lot of security, and the police or soldiers killed a rioter? Would Trump have declared martial law? Would he have arrested Nancy Pelosi for murder? Goldsmith and the rest are desperate to pretend that January 6th, though “shocking”, was really not that big a deal. No harm, no foul. But it was a very big deal. Trump did not have a “master plan”. No one ever synchronized watches: rather, it was free-flowing improvisation. But Trump was quite determined to hold onto power, and he would have carried out his ramshackle, catch as catch can putsch with a perfectly clear conscience if events had fallen his way.
Goldsmith and his ilk want to believe that Trump is some strange freak of nature, something that came out of nowhere and to nowhere will return, never to bother us again, vanishing without us ever having to lift so much as a finger to make it happen. This is the same game the right has been playing ever since he emerged as a political player. This is not the case. Donald Trump simply gave the Republican Party the leadership it had been hungering for for decades. Hatred of immigrants, his first and perhaps still most potent issue, has been a motivating factor in Republican politics at least as early as the mid-90s, when Bill Clinton balked at signing welfare reform legislation, not because it was unfair to welfare recipients but because it was unfair to immigrants. The 2012 Republican primary, which ended up nominating the supposed Republican Galahad Mitt Romney, was a contest to see who could piss on immigrants the most. Romney desperately courted Trump’s support in 2012, at a time when Trump was, of course, accusing Obama of being born in Nigeria.
John Dean famously told Richard Nixon that the Watergate coverup was a “cancer growing on the presidency”. “Conservatives”—though the word “hypocrite” would be far more accurate—are insisting that, contrary to what those bull-headed Democrats say, Donald Trump is not a cancer but rather a large and aesthetically unpleasing wart—unattractive, to be sure, but ultimately “benign”—one that will soon dissolve of its own accord if we leave it alone, but only if we leave it alone. If we mess with it, it might get infected. They want to believe this, but they are wrong and they are lying about it, lying both to themselves and to us.
Donald Trump is a cancer, but he is more than that: he is the particularly ugly manifestation of a larger cancer, which unfortunately constitutes the very large majority of the Republican Party, a cancer growing on this country. The willingness of Republican voters to shut their eyes to Trump’s outrageous lawlessness, and the cowardice of “good Republicans” like Jack to deny the active acceptance by so many Republicans of that lawlessness, has very little precedent in American history: only the southern succession comes close, which was, of course, much worse. But unless and until people like Jack Goldsmith develop the courage to confront the true depth of the Republican Party’s inner corruption and stop priding themselves on how many disingenuous excuses they can manufacture to avoid confronting it, the cancer will only get worse.
The United States will not easily recover from the events of the first quarter of the 21st century. We are not whole now; and if and when we are whole again, as I strongly wish to be, we will be a significantly different country than we are now. I hope we will be better. But we will not be the same.
Are Joe and Bibi Hosing Us? Maybe! Maybe!
Okay, let’s lighten things up a little, shall we? I mean, the rain it raineth every day, sure, but not all day every day, right? So here’s the deal. There’s a hope/fear that the United States will agree to underwrite a sort of peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which, as the ultra-reliable Daniel Larison points out, would be a terrible idea. But what if it’s all for show, a hustle cooked by that unlikely pair of politically vulnerable golden agers, U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Premier Bibi Netanyahu, to firm up their shaky supporters by creating a much ado about nothing that will distract their detractors from thinking about how much there is to, well, not enthuse about either of them?
This is one way to read a recent column by WashPost gal Jennifer Rubin, who throws a bucket or two of cold water on the idea of the Saudis and Israelis reaching any sort of settlement. Don’t expect a Saudi-Israel deal soon, or maybe ever, says Jennie, pointing out the many obstacles to any sort of meaningful agreement. Jennie used to be so inveterately in the tank for Israel that I stopped making fun of her—it was too easy. Fortunately, she sobered up, though unfortunately it took the election of Donald Trump to do it, causing her to suddenly realize that Hillary Clinton was not the worst person in the world after all.
It’s Jennie’s theory that neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia can give even the “bare minimum” that the other would accept, so it’s all sound and fury, and really not much of that. So, according to my theory, the more anguished columns intelligent people like Dan write about how terrible an agreement would be if it came to fruition, the better Joe likes it, all the better to please the people who really dislike Joe, the AIPAC crowd, who harbor an ever decreasing confidence in us Democrats, which I wish the Biden administration actually deserved, though it does not. Meanwhile, in Israel, according to my uninformed speculation, every anguished column by conservatives worrying about Bibi selling out to the damn Arabs is met by secret chuckles on Bibi’s part. Oh, yeah, I’m way off the reservation! I’ll climb into bed with anyone! Too good to be true? I’m afraid it might be.
Oliver Anthony’s maudlin tale of woe
I am one of those who had been blissfully unaware of Oliver Anthony’s chart bustin’ tale of rural angst, “Rich Men North of Richmond”, shown below:
I confess I haven’t watched Ollie belt out his little ditty, and in fact I’m sure I would never give it the time of day if Noah Smith hadn’t done me the favor of doing some serious leg work to fact check out the accuracy of Whinin’ Ollie’s lyrics, pulling it all together for a post on his blog, wittily labeled “Noahpinion”, The economics of "Rich Men North of Richmond". Ollie’s complaint is attributed to a factory hand, which he used to be—“I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day/Overtime hours for bullshit pay,” and the like.
Well, “workin’ all day,” isn’t that what people—grown ups, at least—are supposed to do? Noah, of course, is more charitable than I am, noting that factory workers in Virginia have less purchasing power today than in 2010, earning an average of $24.62 an hour, which, Noah says, would work out to an annual income of about $49,000, which, after taxes, as Noah points out, isn’t a lot, and which is about $5,000 less than the 2022 median wage. But I’d point out that, first of all, Ollie says he's working “overtime hours for bullshit pay”. If he’s working five hours of overtime a week, which isn’t exactly busting it, and not getting time and a half, that’s still $125 extra a week, and, figuring on a 50-week work year, that’s $6,155 a year, which puts him over the median. If he is getting time and a half, then he’s getting about $58,000 a year, which is starting to sound, you know, “comfortable”.
Furthermore, he could get, you know, married, which would boost his income by maybe $35,000 or more, if he paid attention to such things. Or, he could have applied himself in high school, gotten decent grades, spent a year or two in community college taking management courses, and end up working as a supervisor in Walmart, sitting at a desk in an air-conditioned office and looking at accounts receivable.
What really ticks Ollie off, of course, is goddamn welfare, and all the fat slobs getting fat on goddamn welfare. It’s here that I part company with Noah a little, though without hooking up with Ollie. Noah wants to “prove” that food stamps don’t make you fat, but food, after all, does make you fat, and food stamps do help you buy food, so the “link” between the two looks pretty sturdy. I don’t think many Americans would be thinner if we had no food stamps, but Ollie seems to want to think so.
Noah also comes a cropper, I think, trying to make the case for Food Stamps by saying that they alleviate “food insecurity”, at least a little. Well, first of all, I think “food insecurity”—defined as “a household lacking consistent access to nutritious food at some point during the year due to limited resources” is a nonsense “measure” dreamed up by liberals embarrassed by the fact that not enough people in this country are actually hungry.1 The definition itself is contradictory: what is “consistent access … at some point during the year” mean? “Consistent access” means “all year”. “At some point” means at least once a year. And what does “nutritious food” mean? Does McDonalds count? If not, why not?
The food stamp program is not exactly small—$121 billion sounds “bigger” to me than Noah would like to believe. Perhaps everyone on Food Stamps needs them to have a healthy diet, but I’m bothered by liberals like Paul Krugman who get mad over work requirements for Food Stamps for the able-bodied. “All the studies show that work requirements don’t increase employment,” Paul says. But if people go off Food Stamps because of work requirements, doesn’t that imply that they didn’t need them very much, that they preferred “leisure” to crab legs or fudge rounds or whatever it is they’re supposed to buy? I’m a supporter of “welfare”, but I believe, shockingly, that it’s also important to maintain “social discipline”, that we should most definitely encourage workforce attachment even at the risk of being “mean” to poor people on occasion. If Dr. Krugman wants to denounce me as a goddamn moralist he is free to do so, but I think Paul can be pretty quick himself with a moral judgment when he wants to be. Unfortunately, we can’t always restrict our moral judgments to the rich and powerful.
1. The homeless generally do qualify as “hungry”, but, in my opinion, they are very often people deeply estranged from society whose attitudes, which are scarcely correctable by “rational” means, make it very difficult for them to hold employment.)
