tingilinde

on the quality of ideas

 

But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.
    -Lionel Trilling

 

 

 

creating a positive opposition

Timothy Snyder on a people's cabinet.

snip

..

Opposition and resistance will take many forms. But a people’s cabinet would be a specific form of activity for politicians. It should be composed of present and past elected officials, and perhaps also past holders of high offices. Unlike journalists or academics or activists or others, such people bear not just ethical but political responsibility. They might have a political future in a restored American democracy. That is the point.

How might the Democratic Party arrange something like this? Unlike parties in parliamentary systems, the Democratic Party has no clear hierarchy, no leader who automatically heads the next government. There is no tradition of an alternative cabinet in the United States. But that does not mean that generating one is impossible! After all, a member of the House of Representatives has already suggested doing this.

The chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is open. Candidates could make a people’s cabinet part of their platform and explain how they would form it. This would be an obvious first step.

Or the ranking members of the relevant House and Senate committees and subcommittees could serve in parallel as the people’s cabinet. Or the ranking member of one important congressional committee, such as Judiciary, could assign all of its members to serve as an alternative cabinet. Or one respected person of authority could be given the authority by some group of Democrats to form the people’s cabinet. Or a caucus within the Democratic Party, impatient with the older generation, could take this up. Or a set of Democratic governors could get together...

The essential point is to figure this out and get started!

...

 

 

insurers of last resort

Susan Crawford on what could happen if one or more goes belly up.

 

american shipbuildling

Out-competed for many reasons.

snip

...

Another worrying indicator is shipbuilding capacity. Commercial shipbuilding in the U.S. is virtually nonexistent: in 2022, the U.S. had just five large oceangoing commercial ships on order, compared to China’s 1,794 and South Korea’s 734. The U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own. It costs twice as much to four times as much to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere. The commercial shipbuilders that do exist only survive thanks to protectionist laws like the Jones Act, which serve to prop up an industry which is uncompetitive internationally. As a result, the U.S. annually imports over 4 trillion dollars worth of goods, 40% of which are delivered by ship (more than by any other mode of transportation), but those ships are overwhelmingly built elsewhere.

...

 

 

healthcare in america in 1754 and the present

A relevant song for today and some history from Ben Franklin.

 

political and environmental cartoonists

Andy Revkin talks to Karen Romano Young and Pat Bagley  (video embedded)

 

When it Comes to Climate and Sustainable Progress, What's Art Got to Do it? by Andy @Revkin

An evergreen conversation with two artists using drawing in very different ways to drive social and environmental change

Read on Substack

public domain day

The first was public domain day. Works from 1929 are now the public's along with sound recordings from 1924.  Some samples.

 

a tip of the hat to Dan

 

requiring proof of citizenship to vote

Kansas tried it - it didn't work out very well.

snip

...

That’s because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory.

The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn’t been enforced since 2018.

...

a tip of the hat to Sukie

women and plummeting birthrates

The future could see serious erosion on women's rights in many countries.  

snip

...

But the original dilemma remains: How do countries make more kids? Governments have responded with pleas and incentives to encourage families to procreate. Hungary has abolished income tax for mothers under the age of 30. In 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un was seen weeping on television as he urged the National Conference of Mothers to do their part to stop declining birth rates. In Italy, Premier Giorgia Meloni has backed a campaign to reach at least half a million births a year by 2033.

As these measures fail to have their intended effect, though, the pressure on women is taking a more sinister turn. Conservative pro-natalist movements are promoting old-fashioned nuclear families with lots of children, achievable only if women give birth earlier. This ideology at least partly informs the devastating clampdown on abortion access in some US states. Anyone who thinks that abortion rights have nothing to do with population concerns should note that in the summer of 2024, US Senate Republicans also voted against making contraception a federal right. This same worldview feeds into the growing backlash against sexual and gender minorities, whose existence for some poses a threat to the traditional family. The most extreme pro-natalists also include white supremacists and eugenicists.

...

 

 

 

 

the maga wars

Krugman offers his take.

snip

...

I did not, however, expect a MAGA civil war weeks before Trump had even taken office. But in retrospect I should have seen it coming.

Background: Every political movement is a coalition made up of factions with different goals and priorities. Normally what holds these factions together is realism and a willingness to compromise: Each faction is willing to give the other factions part of what they want in return for part of what it wants.

What’s different about MAGA is that I’m pretty sure that almost all of the movement’s activists (as opposed to the low-information voters who put Trump over the top) knew that he was a con man, without even concepts of a plan to reduce prices. But each faction believed that he was their con man, putting something over on everyone else.

But now the two most important factions — what we might call original MAGA, motivated largely by hostility to immigrants, and tech bro MAGA, seeking a free hand for scams low taxes and deregulation — have gone to war, each apparently fearing that they may themselves have been marks rather than in on the con.

...

My guess is Trump goes with the Silicon Valley billionaires.  He's a conman with no ideology other than himself and money and they've proven they have the cash. He's certainly not the sort of person who can bring a fractured "party" together, so he'll go for crazy showiness... maybe threaten Denmark with war to get Greenland.