Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

We will not go back.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Second rate reporter says what?

In my day, never was longer.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Discussion Open Thread: Buying the Future, With Sweat Equity (Post Two of Two)

Discussion Open Thread: Buying the Future, With Sweat Equity (Post Two of Two)

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Stein’s Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. A party that devotes itself entirely to serving a very small (however powerful) population will contort itself into something a majority of voters resent…

Exemplar: Epistemic closure / vice signaling…

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    It was 7 years ago and Republicans haven’t had a good election day since, move on

    So much this.

    I think the thing the right does better than the left is communications and media training. Otherwise, I’m not that impressed with their people.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    The Right Wing movement is pretty good at funding a few figurehead young activists

    think of how many of them turning out to be campaign staffers or congressional aides or or tucker carlson writers

    Clutching dog-eared copies of The Joy of Crooking.

  3. 3.

    twbrandt

    I got maybe halfway through the piece on Vlad the Impaler, and it’s one of the most idiotic things I’ve ever read. That some people take that shit seriously boggles the mind.

  4. 4.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: It’s easy to be good at marketing and communication when you’re the only ones trying to appeal to people’s failure to do introspection over their most irresponsible attitudes.

    Trying to appeal to a diverse array of people who have a reasonable framework to understand the world is hard.

  5. 5.

    bbleh

    I maintain that the visible, noisy part of the right-wing machine — very much including its obnoxious Young Conservatives for Freedom or whatever, but far more importantly the Christianist authoritarians and the pancake-makeup propagandists — is pure “sizzle”, while the “steak” is, or at least long has been, the quiet part — the lobbyists, the bill-writing “think tanks,” the bundlers and donor reps, and the careful placement of very valuable provisions in tax legislation, appropriations, etc. that continue the mission of transferring wealth and power upward.

    Their current problem seems to be that too many of their voters have got a little too high on the sizzle, and it’s causing all kinds of ruckus in the kitchen.  Personally I’m hoping for three-alarm grease fires …

  8. 8.

    Steeplejack

    Conservative leadership? Bruce Bartlett is dying to provide leadership! His pinned tweet on Twitter:

    I am looking for a protege—someone to whom I could pass along my library, research, and ideas, who would carry on and develop the material I have collected, some of which I have written about, some are ideas in development for 40 years or more. Contact if interested.

    — Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) November 22, 2022

  9. 9.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Baud: Not being impressed with the Right’s people is like not being impressed with English cuisine. Their problem, as Krugman likes to note, is that reality has a liberal bias.

    Another way of looking at the issue is this: you know how the right constantly complains that academia is Left-biased, and its leaders to fix the problem by establishing Right-wing programs and institutions, which nobody takes seriously, and then conservatives get pissed off at all the academics who keep ignoring them? How they claim that it’s political bias that keeps a right-wing academic movement from flourishing?

    This just shows up the narrow-minded mediocrity of the people who make such claims. They think that ” academia” is basically just social scientists, whose work is affected by bias. But anyone who has troubled to engage with academic life knows that progressiveness is endemic to all academic endeavor, including the physical and biological sciences. And there is no such thing as “Left-wing physics”, or “Left-wing biochemistry”. The political biases of academics in these fields, such as they are, have nothing to do with their field of study. It has rather to do with the fact that people who explore nature in a spirit of inquiry are repelled by the authoritarianism at the heart of political conservatism.

    That’s all there is to it. Conservative views are unpopular among people who think for a living.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    @Baud:I think the thing the right does better than the left is communications and media training.

    Yup.  And this is why they think they can ‘fix’ their ‘abortion issue problems’ with ‘better messaging’.

    Something lipstick something pig something something.  Best wishes, GOP “messagers”

  11. 11.

    Dangerman

    So, let me look into my crystal balls (it’s always good to have a pair; it’s a redundancy thing).

    Trump is going to be their nominee in 2024. RD is so not ready for Prime Time and who else is there that can take it? Tim Scott? Yeah, as if. Trump has a Melania problem. Scott has a melanin problem.

    Sure, Trump should lose, but we’ll have to go through the “it was rigged, I was robbed” one more time. Plus, it really only comes down to a couple of swings and if they ain’t cheating, they ain’t trying. Meaning, the MF could pull one out (um, so to speak) again.

  12. 12.

    different-church-lady

    I’ve long been thinking that 2016 was a match-up problem: the first female nominee for president versus one of the all-time greatest misogynists.

  13. 13.

    Jeffro

    @bbleh:the “steak” is, or at least long has been, the quiet part — the lobbyists, the bill-writing “think tanks,” the bundlers and donor reps, and the careful placement of very valuable provisions in tax legislation, appropriations, etc. that continue the mission of transferring wealth and power upward.

    I totally agree.  Billionaires barely being taxed at all funds ALEC and “think tanks” and buys state legislators by the barrel.  Higher progressive tax rates should be a part of every D campaign at every level from now until the meteor comes.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro:

    POTUS today, WhiteHouse.gov:

    While I’m here in this union hall with you, the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy went to Wall Street two days ago to describe the MAGA economic vision. It was the day before Tax Day. Do you think he told the wealthy and powerful that it was finally time to start paying their fair share of taxes? No.

    Do you think he told billion-dollar companies to stop stashing profits in tax havens and shipping jobs overseas? No.

    Instead he proposed huge cuts to important programs that millions of working- and middle-class Americans count on. All the while he and MAGA officials are separately pushing more tax giveaways that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.

    Folks, it’s the same old trickle-down dressed up in MAGA clothing. Only worse.

    He gets it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    Kent

    I’m trying to figure out how a bunch of highly paid lefty Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirks will help things.

    Sheesh

    The only reason they have followings is because they make the legs twitch on 75 year old FOX news retirees.  Anyone young just thinks they are cringe.

  16. 16.

    Anoniminous

    @Dangerman: ​
     
    Trump is over-weight, has had Covid-19, and only at the start of severe legal problems. With all that he may not make it to the end of Spring never mind November 2024.

  17. 17.

    Albatrossity

    “A party that devotes itself entirely to serving a very small (however powerful) population will contort itself into something a majority of voters resent…”

    Which is exactly why they are working so hard to make sure that voters don’t matter any more.

    It’s their only hope. But if they succeed at that, it’s game over for us (and the planet).

  20. 20.

    Jeffro

    OT but in Today’s Moment of Weird: I had the privilege of hearing Liz Cheney speak both yesterday and today (once to a group of college students, the other to a more general audience).  I’m incredibly glad she is finding ways to stay in this fight against trump’s cult of personality and the general degradation of the GOP.

    She was extremely direct with both groups about the threat our country faces from forces (both within and without) trying to destroy our democracy, and she is clearly thrilled that young people are getting more engaged/turning out in ever-higher numbers to vote.  Yes, really. ;)

    (I was also pleased to hear that she’s anti-book burning and pro-gun safety, so how ’bout them apples?)

    Anyway, I’m sending a message back through space/time to my 2010 self: “Hey Fro, you just sat through (and enjoyed) an hour with Liz Cheney.”  Wiii-ld.

  21. 21.

    Honus

    @Jeffro: Liz just became a professor at UVA.  I wasn’t too excited about that but I might have to check her out now on your recommendation.

  22. 22.

    Gvg

    Um this is being too high on our own supply. Lots of young people are really conservative on college campuses surrounded by liberals. They aren’t all freaks. First, a lot of them are brought up very religious and are sincerely still …habitual and rule following. This even applies to black young people by the way.

    Side note, it used to be noted that a significant part of the evangelical churches were black evangelical and that they were not totally in agreement in politics with the white evangelicals. That is they were antiabortion too and less likely to be gay friendly but they voted democrat. This was some years ago. Now that it has become so clear that most white evangelical churches are really racist or very protective of racists….the label evangelical probably doesn’t seem so right any more. I have wondered if a lot of the drop in self identifying as evangelical might not be all black churches relabeling?

    Second, misogyny is still around

    Third, gun culture. Plenty love it, thus they call themselves conservatives and are not hiding it. Never have.

    I would say conservatism is much less popular than it was among the young, but it’s not so lopsided as this sounds. Maybe 60 40. Not sure that isn’t too optimistic and it needs to continue a good long while to fix voting habits. Heck I thought we had this after the Iraq bloody debacle around 2003 but people forget.

    Don’t get cocky. It’s good to not despair but moderation is wiser, ok?

  23. 23.

    Glidwrith

    @Albatrossity: And there it is: serving only a small number of the population. Therefore, no leadership is desirable, only followers, the more mindless and illiterate, the better.

  24. 24.

    Sister Golden Bear

    In tonight’s edition of Republicans being evil (I realize that’s redundant), Missouri’s AG unilaterally ordered a ban on all trans health, including adults — including hormones. This will forcibly medically de-transition tens of thousands of trans Missourians.

    Meanwhile Montana Republicans deliberately misgendered their first, and only, state legislator, and are demanding she be censured — something that’s never happened in the legislature’s history before — for language she used while speaking against a bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for children. Specifically: “If you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.” I love how Montana Republicans clutch their pearls claim to care about decorum when they’ll routinely call transgender people “mutilated,” claim that trans people are groomers.

    Meanwhile Florida edges closer to being the second state to nearly ban gender affirming care for trans adults. It will ban health insurance coverage for adult gender affirming care. It will also make doctors severely liable, and will ban nurse practitioners, who do the majority of care for trans adults, from providing care. Florida continues to try to be the worst state for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.

  27. 27.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Gvg:

    Maybe 60 40.

    Last I heard the polls, 80 20.  The youth really, really don’t like being told they can’t have sex, and they really, really don’t like being told to suck it up when they worry about school shootings.

  28. 28.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Anoniminous: I keep wondering what the field really looks like if that guy is removed. I know, part of the question is whether he’s truly removed if he goes to prison. But assuming he is, are any of the existing rest of the pack viable?

  29. 29.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kirk Spencer:

    part of the question is whether he’s truly removed if he goes to prison.

    You can be on the ticket in jail, but you can’t campaign.  No rallies.  Very few interviews.  No makeup.  That’s a mountainous uphill climb.

  30. 30.

    Jeffro

    @Honus: please do!

    She’s still Liz – still very much pro-fossil fuels and all – but it was helpful to hear her talking about the urgency of putting down the trump cult of personality, standing with Ukraine, etc.

    Plus she told a great “the first time I met Jamie Raskin” story (they are friendly and respect each other a lot)

  31. 31.

    Eolirin

    @Frankensteinbeck: Climate change is also an animating concern, and young people are way more LGBTQ friendly. The jump to 20% identifying as queer in some way is massive. So all of the attacks on that aren’t helping.

    They’re also far more anti-capitalist, since that hasn’t really been working out between student loan debt and housing costs.

    But one issue we’re likely to face is that I don’t think attitudes are evenly distributed, even with all that. CA youth and Ohio youth are not the same, and the Ohio youth (that actually stay in Ohio too, which is also a part of the problem) are more consequential in our system. So it won’t necessarily be quite so clean a generational shift.

    Some places will move faster than others.

  33. 33.

    Eolirin

    @Frankensteinbeck: If he gets charged and convicted on espionage act violations with respect to the classified document stuff he isn’t allowed to hold office anymore right?

  34. 34.

    Dangerman

    @Frankensteinbeck: That’s a mountainous uphill climb.

    To paraphrase A Few Good Men, in the hands of a lesser politician, that would be a problem. Trump could be in Prison, bound up like Hannibal Lector so he couldn’t utter a word, and he’s still getting the votes from his miscreants. Prison ain’t curing the problem.

    Again, he would surely lose, but it would, “of course”, be rigged.

  35. 35.

    Jeffro

    @Dangerman:trump could be in Prison, bound up like Hannibal Lecter so he couldn’t utter a word,

    stop right there

    I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight, just at the thought of it

  36. 36.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Frankensteinbeck: it is, I agree. But I keep thinking of ways to sidestep those restrictions. Most of them require reliable MAGAts in the prison system supported by others outside, and somehow I don’t think that’s a big stretch.

  38. 38.

    Major Major Major Major

    The kind of named Nazi adjacent or post-rat folks on this here website is what I’m thinking. Most don’t actually work for Claremont! The right’s politically active young base are weirdos in discords sharing racist memes

    Absolutely correct. They still aren’t very numerous though.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @bbleh:

    The thing is, though, that the steak can’t function without the sizzle.  As unpopular as the right’s views on social issues are, they’re still more popular than lowering the tax rate on the ultra-rich and gutting Social Security and Medicare to pay for it.  Without the sizzle of hating on Those People, nobody would buy the steak of turning the country over to the 0.01%.

  40. 40.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Roger Moore: the Reagan coalition managed to hold together for decades but is sort of on its last legs. Unclear how much appetite is left for steak. Sure, legacy legislators are happy to pass it, but it’s culture war all the way down any more. Even the libertarian party has been taken over by frothing culture warrior fascists who think DeSantis is great.

  41. 41.

    RaflW

    Daniel Larison used to write for American Conservative. He left AmCon about the time that site went batshit. I still follow Larison, and while I respect his anti-war stance, he’s that sort of earnest, tedious conservative that is clearly not wired at all for MAGA, but ultimately can’t really find a perch in any US rightward institution. Earnest and moderately smart gets one nothing over there.

  48. 48.

    Yutsano

    i mean, there will probably not be another speaker of the house like nancy pelosi in at least fifty years.

    *Hakeem Jeffries has entered the chat*

  49. 49.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    “Learning from Vald the Impalier”

    What an example; sexually molested as a kid, in exile more than he was in power and in the end was betrayed by his own people and decapitated.

  50. 50.

    Brachiator

    one weird thing about the modern right is their self-conscious adoption of the vocabulary and imagery of evil.

    There’s something to this. The current episode of The Federalist podcast is titled, Lessons From the House of Habsburg.

    On this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Eduard Habsburg, Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta, joins Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to share the story of his family, which ruled for centuries over parts of Europe, and discuss what lessons the current world can learn from rulers of times past.

    It would seem to me that democracy is incompatible with yearning for being ruled by a hereditary monarchy, but some conservatives have a fetish for hierarchy and authoritarianism.

  51. 51.

    Fair Economist

    It was 7 years ago and Republicans haven’t had a good election day since, move on

    Hrm. No. The Republicans had a good election day in 2016 – a surprise win of both the Presidency and the Senate. Since *then* they haven’t had a good day, although they haven’t done poorly in Senate races and that’s becoming a problem.

  53. 53.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Another Scott:

    Late to the thread, but it’s one of the many things I love about Biden. He is old, sure, but his formative political experiences hark back to a time when ‘respectable’ politics included union membership and a collective sensibility. That time is now two generations ago, but he still believes it and espouses it.
    Lo and behold, the pendulum is swinging back to another form of collective endeavour and a drive to unionise new industries.

    It is funny, but it turns out he is the right person for the time that has finally arrived, albeit with its own C21st characteristics.

  54. 54.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Major Major Major Major:

    This. It is zombie Reaganism. Second time as tragedy as well. Same with the conservatives here in Oz. They have learned nothing in the last twenty years, and the unceasing support of the Murdoch media here has made them intellectually flabby and too politically unfit to grapple with new issues and a new generation.

    I believe  we are finally seeing the fag ends of an era that began 40 years ago.

  55. 55.

    TriassicSands

    I sometimes get frustrated that the conservative movement does a much better job financially supporting young activists than the progressive movementl…  Amanda Hoey

    That’s not surprising since the so-called “conservative” movement (though there is nothing conservative about it) is much, much larger than the size of the “progressive” movement. Relatively few Democrats actually qualify as progressive. In part, I think one has to be reasonably well informed to be progressive and that describes only a vary small part of the electorate — left or right.

  56. 56.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Brachiator:

    Any C21st political movement that reaches back to the Hapsburgs for visions and inspiration of a political and social future has moved beyond the realm of the imagined and straight into a fine form of madness. Absolutely detached from reality and the lived experience of generations.

  59. 59.

    TriassicSands

    @Kirk Spencer:

    Going to prison will not remove Trump or anyone else from running for president. Were Trump to win, he would simply pardon himself and proceed with the destruction of our country.

  60. 60.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Manyakitty: I think that was a remix of the original invincible-cockroach-getting-stomped comic. (Note the date in the title.) But yeah, Breathed saw a lot of this coming (especially in the final arc of the original Bloom County, in which Trump destroyed the entire comic and paved over the Dandelion Patch).

  61. 61.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kirk Spencer: “[Eugene] Debs ran for president in the 1920 election while imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He received 919,799 votes (3.4 percent), slightly less than he had won in 1912, when he received 6 percent, the highest number of votes for a Socialist Party presidential candidate in the United States.”

    You could look it up.

  63. 63.

    burritoboy

    I don’t think this kind of discussion is very helpful. There’s a certain amount of usefulness in repeating “we have majorities” in terms of pumping up positive vibes for us Democrats, but it’s less useful as an analytical tool. We all know this too well: the majorities are quite slim, for instance.

    More importantly, everybody knows (or certainly suspects and tries to suppress for their own mental well-being) that democratic republics just aren’t wired to simply transfer some measure of “we have a majority” to necessarily having any kind of successful polity in any really meaningful way. There’s a massive amount of structures – and many of these seem to be necessary – and so on that make that simple equation dubious.

    That young conservative activists are often / usually deeply disgusting may be problematic for their movement, or, instead actually be extremely useful. It’s very difficult to say, especially since they have extremely powerful allies who are very eager to make use of them. That centrist Democratic young activists are probably better people – and I would agree this is largely true – may actually be a hindrance or even deeply problematic. (Yes, it probably helps those young activists’ personal mental health, but they may be significantly less useful to the overall political effort precisely because of that.)

    I think, too, this analysis relies too much on what we might call current-day liberalism’s conservative nature (nature or personal tendency, not policy opinions): it mostly wants to preserve or conserve current-day liberalism and does not have a desire for really fundamental change. That’s fine, of course, if your polity isn’t facing fundamental challenges or internal strife. But that’s not a reasonable depiction of our current polity which both really does face fundamental challenges and has a political current that will force fundamental challenges to occur whether the rest of the polity wants it or not (just for one example from today’s headlines: the Republicans create a fundamental political challenge just today with weaponizing the debt limit.)

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