the obvious explanation, that he is a malignant narcissistic crook who is intellectually out of his depth, now seems like a better explanation than the complex, nuanced theories that it’s all part of some grand 4D chess strategy for defeating Our Enemies.
Like Occam’s equivalent but the Trump Razor is that the answer to everything Trump does is not the simplest but the stupidest.
This is why the US has put tariffs on Madagascar because the trade is ‘unfair’. The very poor people of Madagascar are not buying enough Teslas and iPhones and selling er far too much Vanilla to the US. So using the ‘Trump Razor’ rather than been a pretty standard example of comparative advantage (e.g. Vanilla production), it is cheating the US…..
I suppose there must be a comforting certainty in that heuristic but I'm not so sure.
Hickams Dictum is more appropriate, perhaps, in the circumstances. Trump is riding a wave of complex, interwoven grievances. America - and the West more generally - have multiple ailments that permit of no simple diagnosis.
I have never been persuaded that he is 'stupid'. Not by the standard of his contemporaries anyway.
Even if we concede that he is a malignant, he is not an undirected malignant. Trump may be a Richard III, but he is no Iago. His malignancy does not appear to be motiveless - at least to my eyes. Far from it.
He speaks for a qualified majority of the American population who feel their country has been hard done by global imbalances in trade.
We may agree or disagree or decline to take a position but to simply call him stupid seems inadequate.
My comment was obviously a joke but has a kernel of truth in it.
I do not think Trump is stupid but he has an economic view that was formed in c1980 based on NY property development and dealing with Japanese investors. Trade and trade economics do not work the way Trump and Navarro suggests.
The Madagascar example is valid, I could also point to Vietnam - it has a trade surplus as it is the centre for the manufacture clothing and trainers, something the US buys a lot of. Vietnam is poor so does not buy a lot of iPhones or Teslas and for cultural reasons little US agri-foods.
If Americans feel they have been hard done by in trade that is simply not visible in economic statistics and why is the low value low cost ‘metal bashing’ in say China of the slightest interest to the US? 200,000 people in the US will not be queuing to work 24 hour shifts assembling iPhones for Foxconn for minimum wage.
This is a trading system that was designed by the US in 1944 and is still visible today albeit breaking down under this presidency.
It’s moot anyway as in the not too distant future manufacturing will reshore anyway as it becomes so highly automated.
Trump's aim - to reindustrialise America - is excellent. And feasible.
(In 1944, blue-collar work was booming and fixed exchange rates possible. Things have changed out of recognition since then, with the Western working-class bring the losers).
But Trump's tariffs gamble was much too bold and chaotic a gamble to rectify things.
But tariffs are vital to avoid being undercut by cheap labour.
America cannot reindustrialise as the unit costs are far too high. It is simply basic economics.
It specialises in very high value manufacturing such as aerospace, pharma and is like the UK broadly a services economy.
Frankly looking at the economic statistics that’s working out well. Europe would dream of the GDP pc growth the US has!
1944 is simply not relevant in 2025.
If you think tariffs will stop the US being undercut by cheap labour - what you are actually saying ins the US consumers have to pay a huge tax in order to restore low value manufacturing. It simply doesn’t make any sense ….
'The Economist' this week estimated that an iPhone manufactured in the US would cost about $3,500, so I'm not sure 'feasible' is an entirely accurate description of such a policy. I realise that using an iPhone as an example probably says as much about the Economist's writers as it does about economics, but the point is clear enough.
And yet, and yet - every time I visit the Ironbridge Gorge Museums, I yearn for a return to those simple manly times. Problem is, I'd certainly have died due to some nasty disease, distant war, drunken brawl, limb-mangling accident etc, at somewhat less than half my current age - If I'd made to adulthood at all.
I think egotistical Latin American strongman is the best way to think of him, and the Democrats/the left have paved the way by just being so insufferably pious. He's the most dishonest, most lied about and the funniest US President in history, which is quite an achievement.
There is no possibility of a 30 years of woke never mind 1000. The immigration that woke enables will kill woke so stone dead that it’s almost funny in a Schadenfreude way. Also financially, we are going to hell in a hand cart in any event. See e.g. Ray Dalio’s comments on the UK’s fiscal situation, which can be extrapolated to the West generally. Dalio also sees the tariff thing as just an expression of a deeper coming apart of the prior financial settlement of unsustainable debt levels and also huge debt imbalances between e.g. China and the US. Trump has just accelerated this – although let’s be honest not remotely in any sort of 4D chess way. Hannia (who might be something of a grifter himself) thinks mass immigration is a good thing and so is insensitive to what I see as the worst excess of the current system – although there are many others. Populism would never have allowed mass migration, it would never have allowed being soft on crime, it would never have allowed PC, it would never have allowed trans, it would never have accepted that people (elites included) can so parasite off the system.
I wouldn't call Hanania a grifter - he just believes that mass immigration is a good idea, which I strongly disagree with. My next post is about how the European Right should proceed.
I find he casts aspersions too easily and his belief in elite human capital ( him, obv) misses the point that most elite capital is now functioning in a parasitic way within a mad system of its own creation which seems to be collapsing under its own weight with elites too invested in to admit it. Trump provides distraction. I’m no fan btw. I just think this thing is so much bigger than Trump and TDS assumes the system isn’t f’d already
The US is not soft on crime-- our imprisonment stats testify top that, and we are one of a handful of countries that still have (and occasionally use) the death penalty.
It's not clear what populism could do about the trans thing. Not affirm it in law, sure, but populism doesn't really have the tool box to address bottom-up social changes. Even principled religious conservatism doesn't really succeed well there as witness the fact that after decades of foot-stomping social conservatism abortion is more accepted than ever in the US, and SSM has majority support.
The US has tens of dozens of jurisdictions and many have appointed incredibly woke DAs who yes, are soft on crime. Things have changed a lot in the past 10 or so years. You may be remembering things like Clinton's "three strikes" policy for federal crimes, etc. But the trend since has been for a softer approach.
I recommend the book The War on Cops by Heather Mac Donald and some of the writings/interviews of Michael Shellenberger, who discusses the decriminalisation wave within law enforcement policy and its disastrous consequences in places like San Francisco.
In the last ten years? A lot of those "woke" DAs have been voted out of office. A few have been prosecuted for corruption (e.g., Baltimore's Marilyn Mosby). Crime rates are headed back down
Speaking anecdotally, my contacts with the NYPD have all involved rapid responses and a high level of efficiency, down to organizing a SWAT team in order to help rid my family of a troublesome tenant and up to efficaciously ticketing cars blocking my Brooklyn driveway. In addition, I know at least two people who have defended their property and family with open violence and been backed completely by the state (this is New York, not Florida) in a way that I do not think would happen in the U.K.
In other words, as far as crime is concerned, woke appears to have lost badly on this side of the Atlantic. That is not to say that the wave of disorder that rose in 2020 has dissipated -- the increase in deeply-troubled people sleeping in or stumbling through the L-train on my commute attests to that. But the slow action is not a result of ideological or cultural opposition.
And I should add that if the disorder were that bad, then my 10-year-old daughter would not be allowed to ride certain subway lines alone, but she is.
I think Trump 2 is a revolutionary, and revolutions do not always work as intended. So far he has not been good on Ukraine and tariffs but I like antiwoke and DOGE. His team isn’t just yes men - Musk and Bill Ackman are major industrial and financial figures, both previously critical of Trump. As was Vance. It’s simply not true that Trump doesn’t forgive people, that is a much repeated lie. Let’s see, we don’t have any choice.
I have more of an open mind about domestic policy, but his international policy so far has been so disastrous it overshadows everything. That is a fair point about forgiveness - Vance said some very harsh things before.
(something I wonder is if the assassination attempt has made him worse, but have no real evidence)
The anti-woke and DOGE stuff is being done in a random, scattershot way, producing lots of wasted efforts, collateral damage and risibly stupid moves by people who do not understand the things they dealing with.
DOGE and the anti-woke policies appear quite different. The anti-woke is quite radical, focused, and effective. DOGE is a mess, at best. Some of the grants and programs deserve to be cut and a bonfire of regulations would not be a bad thing, but the personnel cuts appear to lack rhyme or reason. Moreover, the attacks on agency functions at best stretch the Constitution, which troubles me even when I agree.
Well put. Rolling back progressive overreach and making government effecient are worthy goals, but it doesn't justify what's currently happening. The ends don't always justify the means, but they seem to in MAGA world, which has its own variant of TDS.
We all think we reach our own conclusions but in reality we take them off-the-peg from others we trust and who know more about the subject than we do. I tend to trust Milton Friedman on economics, not because I have delved deep into the subject, but because I like him and he seems trustworthy.
I trust Ed but I also trust Victor Davis Hanson and Matt Goodwin and Konstantin Kisin. So what to do when they disagree with each other? Say nothing, watch what happens and whoever turns out to have been right, rely slightly more on him in the future and slightly less on the others. I might have to wait several years before the mist finally clears and we see who was right.
No one in their right mind would defend Trump's awful character. Also the memecoin business looks very shady and not the kind of thing a President should got involved in. Trump clearly has some mental disposition which must surely have a name in psychology. Narcissism is clearly one but there are probably others. Even so, I have read a defense of his going after the law firm that indulged in lawfare against him. They went out, not with a charge against him, but simply looking for ANYTHING that could possibly be held against him. I doubt that there's anyone alive, at least no one who's not a hermit or saint, would be confident that a team of lawyers couldn't find SOMETHING in their past. (That library book I never took back!) Apparently that's not how things usually work so I'm happy enough with what he did so as to encourager les autres.
I can also see the logic of putting your own people in positions of power. It seems the only way to get around a deep state which is dead set against him. I would be happy if we could swap all civil servants in Britain when a new political party takes power. Apparently Priti Patel found it hard to get anything done (even if she'd really wanted to). So if I were President, I too might value loyalty over competence, providing the incompetence doesn't sink to the level of Laura Looming and that Kraken woman.
I'm deeply pessimistic, but my only hope is this is all a negotiation strategy and that he will pivot once he gets deals he prefers.
The insanity of the culturaly Left has made possible the madness of the political Right. The inversion is also in our future, as MAGA has created the playbook for another round of cultural insanity.
Maybe a very obvious thing to say, but the reaction to this madness needs to come from the non-deranged right, where I flatter myself I stand, rather than from the left. Otherwise I agree with your 1000 years of woke.
Ed - you have a keen sense of British history and that's one reason I read you. So some US history might help you tamp down the fever. Richard Nixon and LBJ were both far more competent at being evil and vindictive than Trump and we survived them both. Every president has had wacko hangers on (Loomer is more flamboyant than most, to be sure). We've got quite robust institutions and they work pretty well even under extreme stress. Trump will do some dumb things. So do most of our leaders.
The US system has lasted 249 years so sure will survive this one! This is why I'm not making any predictions about intellectuals fleeing the country, though I'm sure you're all devastated to lose Prof Stanley.
If only all the people threatening to leave would, that would be a silver lining to the crazy stuff! And I had high hopes he’d send Prince Harry back to you all, but have been disappointed once again.
The US system and its foundations have been dying since the 1960's.
Like modern Britain, the modern USA is simply an economy with a country attached.
Britain, being an island, can survive economic breakdown. The US won't. And Trump or No Trump, breakdown of as complicated a machine as today's global economy, is a case of When not If.
"Competent" in the key word there. LBJ and Nixon were both SOBs and you wouldn't want them as dinner guests. But they accomplished worthwhile things too. Trump's bull in the china shop approach is wrecking the infrastructure of governance left and right.
The simplest explanation is that he is a genuine idiot on trade and in an anti-capitalist way. That goes against everything that has been said against him for years which creates a dilemma for his opponents. Dems have been tweeting that Trump is for the rich while Billionaire wealth is collapsing. I guess the problem is that Trumpian incompetence and idiocy aren't good motivators for anti-Trump partisans who are desperate for him to be a racist, fascist, elitist and capitalist Russian spy.
I mean I don't know Ed, maybe we (UK Europe generally ) shouldn't have de-industrialized so profoundly. Maybe we should have listened to DeGaulle, and Bevan, and Powell. Maybe it is not good a thing that the people who have smothering the Uigurs, control X amount of the world's manufacturing. Do you really think that Ron Paul, or AOC would be different. They would be ranting about something else but the result would be the same.
We haven't deindustrialized. Here's a graph of US manufacturing output since the late 90s. There have been some downturns during recessionary times, but overall the graph shows an increase. What has happened is that manufacturing employment has declined and that's mostly due to automation. In this and many other matters (e..g, energy) Trump seems stuck permanently in the past unaware that things have happened and it's not 1970 any more.
I know what you’re saying, but I also feel (so far at least… ), that it’s a necessary reaction to the excesses of the left and our elite class.
Take the example of deliberately clearing out woke people from the institutions. These institutions have all been ideologically captured by the left - assuming you don’t use executive power to clear them out, what will happen? The people in charge will hire more leftists, using things like “DEI impact statements” to assess ideological compliance, and they will frustrate you at every turn. It’s a necessary prerequisite to the promised change on things like deporting illegal immigrants. We’re in a similar situation with our civil service and judiciary, have you seen Douglas Carswell’s latest work “Milestones”?
If we're talking institutions under the executive branch of government then Trump has every right to clear out such people. If we're talking non-government or private entities, then he has no such legitimate power, and that's that.
Just in: Trump is pausing the tariffs for 90 days to allow for negotiation. The one exception is China with which there will be no pause.
I agree that China, among major economies, is the biggest culprit when it comes to predatory trade practices so I won't complain about that. I very much hope we can now avoid economy-wrecking policy when it comes to Europe, Japan and western hemisphere countries.
Chris Wright, Ed Burgum, Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles etc are yes men, really? This is the best cabinet we have had in a long, long time. Trump was burned badly in his first term by leaks and back stabbing, his insistence on loyalty is over compensating for sure, but as with the attacks on certain law firms, it's understandable. Hopefully the tariffs are a negotiating tactic and will end within a few months, hopefully. The "do we really want to make tennis shoes" meme is a straw man. Trump says we need to protect certain industries for national security, such as steel, aluminum, computer chips and pharmaceuticals, he's right, so tariffs, or subsidies, to protect those industries are needed.
Ed, please don't come down with TDS. I have two friends who have it and they have become insufferable. One literally has spittle spewing from his mouth at times as he inveighs against Trump. He railed against Trump's racist lie that Covid came from China, and said Trump was lying to get reelected by saying we would have a vaccine by the end of the year. He said Trump couldn't stop the influx at the southern border without comprehensive immigration reform. I could go on. Worst, he isn't at all bothered by the government spying on Trump's campaign, by the law fare used to undermine him, he supported FBI's efforts to suppress the information implicating Joe Biden in foreign influence peddling because Trump must be prevented from winning. So please, don't get TDS.
How long are the smart ones going to stick around? he has a long history of falling out with employees in office.
And don't worry, I have one more piece about how the European Right deals with this, then I'm moving onto other areas. Plenty of other people commenting on US politics!
"The constant evocation of fascism is not just mistaken in my view, but neurotic. Western civilisation is emotionally scarred by the violent racial supremacism of the Nazi regime.."
I have a bit of a pet peeve about those who confuse fascism and Nazism considering that they were actually distinct ideologies that were often at odds with each other. For example, before the Anschluss, the previous regime in Austria was actually an "Austrofascist" regime aligned with Italy!
Paul Gottfried is interesting about this in his two books on the subject. What people mean when they warn about 'fascism' today though is Nazism in particular.
Italian Fascism wasn't even anti-Semitic until Mussolini became Hitler's puppet towards the end of WWII. There were actually prominent Jewish party members!
the obvious explanation, that he is a malignant narcissistic crook who is intellectually out of his depth, now seems like a better explanation than the complex, nuanced theories that it’s all part of some grand 4D chess strategy for defeating Our Enemies.
And I think William of Occam would concur.
Have you heard of the ‘Trump Razor’.
Like Occam’s equivalent but the Trump Razor is that the answer to everything Trump does is not the simplest but the stupidest.
This is why the US has put tariffs on Madagascar because the trade is ‘unfair’. The very poor people of Madagascar are not buying enough Teslas and iPhones and selling er far too much Vanilla to the US. So using the ‘Trump Razor’ rather than been a pretty standard example of comparative advantage (e.g. Vanilla production), it is cheating the US…..
I suppose there must be a comforting certainty in that heuristic but I'm not so sure.
Hickams Dictum is more appropriate, perhaps, in the circumstances. Trump is riding a wave of complex, interwoven grievances. America - and the West more generally - have multiple ailments that permit of no simple diagnosis.
I have never been persuaded that he is 'stupid'. Not by the standard of his contemporaries anyway.
Even if we concede that he is a malignant, he is not an undirected malignant. Trump may be a Richard III, but he is no Iago. His malignancy does not appear to be motiveless - at least to my eyes. Far from it.
He speaks for a qualified majority of the American population who feel their country has been hard done by global imbalances in trade.
We may agree or disagree or decline to take a position but to simply call him stupid seems inadequate.
My comment was obviously a joke but has a kernel of truth in it.
I do not think Trump is stupid but he has an economic view that was formed in c1980 based on NY property development and dealing with Japanese investors. Trade and trade economics do not work the way Trump and Navarro suggests.
The Madagascar example is valid, I could also point to Vietnam - it has a trade surplus as it is the centre for the manufacture clothing and trainers, something the US buys a lot of. Vietnam is poor so does not buy a lot of iPhones or Teslas and for cultural reasons little US agri-foods.
If Americans feel they have been hard done by in trade that is simply not visible in economic statistics and why is the low value low cost ‘metal bashing’ in say China of the slightest interest to the US? 200,000 people in the US will not be queuing to work 24 hour shifts assembling iPhones for Foxconn for minimum wage.
This is a trading system that was designed by the US in 1944 and is still visible today albeit breaking down under this presidency.
It’s moot anyway as in the not too distant future manufacturing will reshore anyway as it becomes so highly automated.
Trump's aim - to reindustrialise America - is excellent. And feasible.
(In 1944, blue-collar work was booming and fixed exchange rates possible. Things have changed out of recognition since then, with the Western working-class bring the losers).
But Trump's tariffs gamble was much too bold and chaotic a gamble to rectify things.
But tariffs are vital to avoid being undercut by cheap labour.
America cannot reindustrialise as the unit costs are far too high. It is simply basic economics.
It specialises in very high value manufacturing such as aerospace, pharma and is like the UK broadly a services economy.
Frankly looking at the economic statistics that’s working out well. Europe would dream of the GDP pc growth the US has!
1944 is simply not relevant in 2025.
If you think tariffs will stop the US being undercut by cheap labour - what you are actually saying ins the US consumers have to pay a huge tax in order to restore low value manufacturing. It simply doesn’t make any sense ….
"It simply doesn't make any sense."
Nor does throwing one's working-class under the bus.
After all, who else is going to fight for you ?
Certainly not realtors or lawyers, certainly not immigrants or burger-flippers.
'The Economist' this week estimated that an iPhone manufactured in the US would cost about $3,500, so I'm not sure 'feasible' is an entirely accurate description of such a policy. I realise that using an iPhone as an example probably says as much about the Economist's writers as it does about economics, but the point is clear enough.
And yet, and yet - every time I visit the Ironbridge Gorge Museums, I yearn for a return to those simple manly times. Problem is, I'd certainly have died due to some nasty disease, distant war, drunken brawl, limb-mangling accident etc, at somewhat less than half my current age - If I'd made to adulthood at all.
We've made Progress - but at a high cost in some respects.
I think egotistical Latin American strongman is the best way to think of him, and the Democrats/the left have paved the way by just being so insufferably pious. He's the most dishonest, most lied about and the funniest US President in history, which is quite an achievement.
he's the funniest politician of our age, and no one comes close.
You need to familiarize yourself with the comedic stylings of Millard Fillmore.
There is no possibility of a 30 years of woke never mind 1000. The immigration that woke enables will kill woke so stone dead that it’s almost funny in a Schadenfreude way. Also financially, we are going to hell in a hand cart in any event. See e.g. Ray Dalio’s comments on the UK’s fiscal situation, which can be extrapolated to the West generally. Dalio also sees the tariff thing as just an expression of a deeper coming apart of the prior financial settlement of unsustainable debt levels and also huge debt imbalances between e.g. China and the US. Trump has just accelerated this – although let’s be honest not remotely in any sort of 4D chess way. Hannia (who might be something of a grifter himself) thinks mass immigration is a good thing and so is insensitive to what I see as the worst excess of the current system – although there are many others. Populism would never have allowed mass migration, it would never have allowed being soft on crime, it would never have allowed PC, it would never have allowed trans, it would never have accepted that people (elites included) can so parasite off the system.
I wouldn't call Hanania a grifter - he just believes that mass immigration is a good idea, which I strongly disagree with. My next post is about how the European Right should proceed.
I find he casts aspersions too easily and his belief in elite human capital ( him, obv) misses the point that most elite capital is now functioning in a parasitic way within a mad system of its own creation which seems to be collapsing under its own weight with elites too invested in to admit it. Trump provides distraction. I’m no fan btw. I just think this thing is so much bigger than Trump and TDS assumes the system isn’t f’d already
I wouldn't call Hanania a grifter. Troll, however… (At least some of the time.)
The US is not soft on crime-- our imprisonment stats testify top that, and we are one of a handful of countries that still have (and occasionally use) the death penalty.
It's not clear what populism could do about the trans thing. Not affirm it in law, sure, but populism doesn't really have the tool box to address bottom-up social changes. Even principled religious conservatism doesn't really succeed well there as witness the fact that after decades of foot-stomping social conservatism abortion is more accepted than ever in the US, and SSM has majority support.
The US has tens of dozens of jurisdictions and many have appointed incredibly woke DAs who yes, are soft on crime. Things have changed a lot in the past 10 or so years. You may be remembering things like Clinton's "three strikes" policy for federal crimes, etc. But the trend since has been for a softer approach.
I recommend the book The War on Cops by Heather Mac Donald and some of the writings/interviews of Michael Shellenberger, who discusses the decriminalisation wave within law enforcement policy and its disastrous consequences in places like San Francisco.
In the last ten years? A lot of those "woke" DAs have been voted out of office. A few have been prosecuted for corruption (e.g., Baltimore's Marilyn Mosby). Crime rates are headed back down
Speaking anecdotally, my contacts with the NYPD have all involved rapid responses and a high level of efficiency, down to organizing a SWAT team in order to help rid my family of a troublesome tenant and up to efficaciously ticketing cars blocking my Brooklyn driveway. In addition, I know at least two people who have defended their property and family with open violence and been backed completely by the state (this is New York, not Florida) in a way that I do not think would happen in the U.K.
In other words, as far as crime is concerned, woke appears to have lost badly on this side of the Atlantic. That is not to say that the wave of disorder that rose in 2020 has dissipated -- the increase in deeply-troubled people sleeping in or stumbling through the L-train on my commute attests to that. But the slow action is not a result of ideological or cultural opposition.
And I should add that if the disorder were that bad, then my 10-year-old daughter would not be allowed to ride certain subway lines alone, but she is.
Homelessness and mental illness are "disorder" ?
I think Trump 2 is a revolutionary, and revolutions do not always work as intended. So far he has not been good on Ukraine and tariffs but I like antiwoke and DOGE. His team isn’t just yes men - Musk and Bill Ackman are major industrial and financial figures, both previously critical of Trump. As was Vance. It’s simply not true that Trump doesn’t forgive people, that is a much repeated lie. Let’s see, we don’t have any choice.
I have more of an open mind about domestic policy, but his international policy so far has been so disastrous it overshadows everything. That is a fair point about forgiveness - Vance said some very harsh things before.
(something I wonder is if the assassination attempt has made him worse, but have no real evidence)
I would say ‘calamitous’ rather than disastrous. Take the UK and Australia.
Probably the two key security partners the US has (excluding Israel).
Both landed with a 10% tariff because of ‘reasons’.
The US has a trade surplus with both.
The US has absolutely key military and intelligence facilities in both. Both 5-eyes members. Both AUKUS members.
The US has a free trade deal with Australia but trade with them is somehow unfair.
The US and UK have been negotiating a FTA with the US for a long time and would sell granny to get it in place. But again trade is somehow unfair.
Idiocy of the highest order…..
The UK imposes VAT and duty on many American goods.
F sake. This is idiocy.
VAT is a sales tax. It is applied to all goods whether British, Chinese or US.
It is NO DIFFERENT to the sales tax of 8.9% I pay when I am in NYC. Or anywhere else in the US.
Why do you think VAT is an issue?
Yes the UK charges duty on US goods (low) and the US charges duty on UK goods (were low now 10% which is *far* higher than the UK charges). So what?
The anti-woke and DOGE stuff is being done in a random, scattershot way, producing lots of wasted efforts, collateral damage and risibly stupid moves by people who do not understand the things they dealing with.
Yes that’s what Rory Stewart said when they cut 1 million from his wife’s charity that was teaching Afghani women about Duchamp.
DOGE and the anti-woke policies appear quite different. The anti-woke is quite radical, focused, and effective. DOGE is a mess, at best. Some of the grants and programs deserve to be cut and a bonfire of regulations would not be a bad thing, but the personnel cuts appear to lack rhyme or reason. Moreover, the attacks on agency functions at best stretch the Constitution, which troubles me even when I agree.
I agree that was very very funny….
Me too
Well put. Rolling back progressive overreach and making government effecient are worthy goals, but it doesn't justify what's currently happening. The ends don't always justify the means, but they seem to in MAGA world, which has its own variant of TDS.
We all think we reach our own conclusions but in reality we take them off-the-peg from others we trust and who know more about the subject than we do. I tend to trust Milton Friedman on economics, not because I have delved deep into the subject, but because I like him and he seems trustworthy.
I trust Ed but I also trust Victor Davis Hanson and Matt Goodwin and Konstantin Kisin. So what to do when they disagree with each other? Say nothing, watch what happens and whoever turns out to have been right, rely slightly more on him in the future and slightly less on the others. I might have to wait several years before the mist finally clears and we see who was right.
who knows? I may be wrong. eagled-eyed readers may have spotted that I have a tendency towards pessimism, but it's not looking great.
No one in their right mind would defend Trump's awful character. Also the memecoin business looks very shady and not the kind of thing a President should got involved in. Trump clearly has some mental disposition which must surely have a name in psychology. Narcissism is clearly one but there are probably others. Even so, I have read a defense of his going after the law firm that indulged in lawfare against him. They went out, not with a charge against him, but simply looking for ANYTHING that could possibly be held against him. I doubt that there's anyone alive, at least no one who's not a hermit or saint, would be confident that a team of lawyers couldn't find SOMETHING in their past. (That library book I never took back!) Apparently that's not how things usually work so I'm happy enough with what he did so as to encourager les autres.
I can also see the logic of putting your own people in positions of power. It seems the only way to get around a deep state which is dead set against him. I would be happy if we could swap all civil servants in Britain when a new political party takes power. Apparently Priti Patel found it hard to get anything done (even if she'd really wanted to). So if I were President, I too might value loyalty over competence, providing the incompetence doesn't sink to the level of Laura Looming and that Kraken woman.
Who's the Kraken woman?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Powell
I'm deeply pessimistic, but my only hope is this is all a negotiation strategy and that he will pivot once he gets deals he prefers.
The insanity of the culturaly Left has made possible the madness of the political Right. The inversion is also in our future, as MAGA has created the playbook for another round of cultural insanity.
Maybe a very obvious thing to say, but the reaction to this madness needs to come from the non-deranged right, where I flatter myself I stand, rather than from the left. Otherwise I agree with your 1000 years of woke.
Ed - you have a keen sense of British history and that's one reason I read you. So some US history might help you tamp down the fever. Richard Nixon and LBJ were both far more competent at being evil and vindictive than Trump and we survived them both. Every president has had wacko hangers on (Loomer is more flamboyant than most, to be sure). We've got quite robust institutions and they work pretty well even under extreme stress. Trump will do some dumb things. So do most of our leaders.
The US system has lasted 249 years so sure will survive this one! This is why I'm not making any predictions about intellectuals fleeing the country, though I'm sure you're all devastated to lose Prof Stanley.
If only all the people threatening to leave would, that would be a silver lining to the crazy stuff! And I had high hopes he’d send Prince Harry back to you all, but have been disappointed once again.
nope, he's yours now!
The US system and its foundations have been dying since the 1960's.
Like modern Britain, the modern USA is simply an economy with a country attached.
Britain, being an island, can survive economic breakdown. The US won't. And Trump or No Trump, breakdown of as complicated a machine as today's global economy, is a case of When not If.
"Competent" in the key word there. LBJ and Nixon were both SOBs and you wouldn't want them as dinner guests. But they accomplished worthwhile things too. Trump's bull in the china shop approach is wrecking the infrastructure of governance left and right.
The simplest explanation is that he is a genuine idiot on trade and in an anti-capitalist way. That goes against everything that has been said against him for years which creates a dilemma for his opponents. Dems have been tweeting that Trump is for the rich while Billionaire wealth is collapsing. I guess the problem is that Trumpian incompetence and idiocy aren't good motivators for anti-Trump partisans who are desperate for him to be a racist, fascist, elitist and capitalist Russian spy.
https://x.com/LevyAntoine/status/1896969234967879813?t=469voUvcS7raRH6zVE6Xmg&s=19
I mean I don't know Ed, maybe we (UK Europe generally ) shouldn't have de-industrialized so profoundly. Maybe we should have listened to DeGaulle, and Bevan, and Powell. Maybe it is not good a thing that the people who have smothering the Uigurs, control X amount of the world's manufacturing. Do you really think that Ron Paul, or AOC would be different. They would be ranting about something else but the result would be the same.
We haven't deindustrialized. Here's a graph of US manufacturing output since the late 90s. There have been some downturns during recessionary times, but overall the graph shows an increase. What has happened is that manufacturing employment has declined and that's mostly due to automation. In this and many other matters (e..g, energy) Trump seems stuck permanently in the past unaware that things have happened and it's not 1970 any more.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output
We...
Manufacturing has declined as a sector of the US economy.
The US still runs massive trade deficits, esp in goods.
The US working-class continues to be spurned or ignored.
The Rust Belt is a hell of US national decline and of despair among many of its people, not a mere figure of speech.
Deaths of despair continue at record proportions.
Yes, things have changed since 1970 - despite Vietnam, the US was a nation then and had a future then.
I know what you’re saying, but I also feel (so far at least… ), that it’s a necessary reaction to the excesses of the left and our elite class.
Take the example of deliberately clearing out woke people from the institutions. These institutions have all been ideologically captured by the left - assuming you don’t use executive power to clear them out, what will happen? The people in charge will hire more leftists, using things like “DEI impact statements” to assess ideological compliance, and they will frustrate you at every turn. It’s a necessary prerequisite to the promised change on things like deporting illegal immigrants. We’re in a similar situation with our civil service and judiciary, have you seen Douglas Carswell’s latest work “Milestones”?
If we're talking institutions under the executive branch of government then Trump has every right to clear out such people. If we're talking non-government or private entities, then he has no such legitimate power, and that's that.
I’m talking about what should be, not what is
Just in: Trump is pausing the tariffs for 90 days to allow for negotiation. The one exception is China with which there will be no pause.
I agree that China, among major economies, is the biggest culprit when it comes to predatory trade practices so I won't complain about that. I very much hope we can now avoid economy-wrecking policy when it comes to Europe, Japan and western hemisphere countries.
Chris Wright, Ed Burgum, Marco Rubio, Susie Wiles etc are yes men, really? This is the best cabinet we have had in a long, long time. Trump was burned badly in his first term by leaks and back stabbing, his insistence on loyalty is over compensating for sure, but as with the attacks on certain law firms, it's understandable. Hopefully the tariffs are a negotiating tactic and will end within a few months, hopefully. The "do we really want to make tennis shoes" meme is a straw man. Trump says we need to protect certain industries for national security, such as steel, aluminum, computer chips and pharmaceuticals, he's right, so tariffs, or subsidies, to protect those industries are needed.
Ed, please don't come down with TDS. I have two friends who have it and they have become insufferable. One literally has spittle spewing from his mouth at times as he inveighs against Trump. He railed against Trump's racist lie that Covid came from China, and said Trump was lying to get reelected by saying we would have a vaccine by the end of the year. He said Trump couldn't stop the influx at the southern border without comprehensive immigration reform. I could go on. Worst, he isn't at all bothered by the government spying on Trump's campaign, by the law fare used to undermine him, he supported FBI's efforts to suppress the information implicating Joe Biden in foreign influence peddling because Trump must be prevented from winning. So please, don't get TDS.
Ed has a valid case that Trump is doing a poor job in the Oval Office, not just for the US, but for the world.
How long are the smart ones going to stick around? he has a long history of falling out with employees in office.
And don't worry, I have one more piece about how the European Right deals with this, then I'm moving onto other areas. Plenty of other people commenting on US politics!
The "European Right" includes people as disparate as Merz and Orban, Sunak and Farage. So good luck !
Much of the Right has liberal opinions. Hence, for example, the total failure of the Tories to tackle quangos or the Blob.
A noteworthy thread on Spengler's now over 100-year prophecy:
https://x.com/thinkingwest/status/1909596492848840896
Here is a noteworthy Christopher Caldwell article on the act of re-naming:
https://thespectator.com/topic/rename-renaming-gulf-america/
"The constant evocation of fascism is not just mistaken in my view, but neurotic. Western civilisation is emotionally scarred by the violent racial supremacism of the Nazi regime.."
I have a bit of a pet peeve about those who confuse fascism and Nazism considering that they were actually distinct ideologies that were often at odds with each other. For example, before the Anschluss, the previous regime in Austria was actually an "Austrofascist" regime aligned with Italy!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_State_of_Austria
Paul Gottfried is interesting about this in his two books on the subject. What people mean when they warn about 'fascism' today though is Nazism in particular.
Italian Fascism wasn't even anti-Semitic until Mussolini became Hitler's puppet towards the end of WWII. There were actually prominent Jewish party members!
Yes, a quarter of Italy's Jews became fascists in the 1920's, mainly from fear of the Reds.
Mussolini wasn't originally an anti-semite, but quickly became so when he fell under Hitler's spell from 1933.
"Fascist", like "socialist" and "fundamentalist" is grossly overused and the word needs a lengthy time-out.