Tabby Tuesday
- Via Reuters: Germany’s Merz seeks election as chancellor in second vote after debacle.
- Via HuffPo: Company Boasts Spending Up To $20 Million On Trump Crypto Coin To Buy Influence. The overt corruption is just sickening to behold. But, you know, Hunter’s laptop. Something. Something.
- Also, via CBS News: Trump family’s net worth has increased by $2.9 billion thanks to crypto investments, new report says.
- Via the NYT: Trump Seeks to Eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.
- Via CBS News: Trump administration in talks with Rwanda to take deportees from U.S.
- Via Politico: Judge strikes down Trump executive order punishing prominent law firm.
- Via HuffPo: ‘Do I Look Like I Care?’: AOC Shreds Trump’s Border Czar In Blunt Free Speech Reminder.
- Greg Sargent in TNR: How Trump Accidentally Sabotaged His Own Case Against Abrego Garcia.
- Worth a read from Kyle Whitmire at AL.com: Alabama’s education system was designed to preserve white supremacy. I should know. One tidbit that leapt out at me, because I wrote about Lowndes County recently:
In 1930, Lowndes County spent $96 per pupil for white schools, according to Alabama historian Wayne Flynt. For Black children, it spent $5.
- Via The Atlantic: Is This the Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture? To which I can only answer, have you watched any 70s TV recently? A lengthy, interesting read, but I am unconvinced that things are as bad as some of the critics think they are (but would they be critics if they liked everything?).
- This is from about a week ago, from G. Elliot Morris, but I never got around to sharing it. It is striking that Trump is underwater in every major category, including immigration (which suggests that pointing out the evils of sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT wasn’t a waste of time). The economy, trade, and cost of living numbers are pretty devastating, given that his whole shtick was that he was the economy president.
The 2024 election may be the end of the American experiment, but it’s a triumph for political science. What they’ve been saying for decades–that all the campaign drama means very little, that it just comes down to people voting their pocketbooks–is the real story of 2024. It confirmed the public will elect pretty much anyone when they’re in the mood to punish the incumbent party–depending, of course, on the elections being free and fair, which it remains to be seen will continue.
Re the Greg Sargent piece on the Abrego Garcia case, John Roberts must be banging his head against the wall. Roberts goes to all the trouble of removing “effectuate” (make it happen) from the order, leaving “facilitate” (assist it happening) to give Trump the out of claiming he tried, but Bukele, or the fates, or something, didn’t cooperate. And Trump’s too dumb to stick to the script.
It is heartening to see in the chart from G. Elliot Morris that Trump is underwater even on immigration. Republicans, both tactically and because simple morality is their default setting, want to make this about whether Abrego Garcia is a bad guy. Maybe the general public understand the real question is whether Trump gets to claim that without due process.
@Kylopod: A scientist has to account for unique variables like Biden’s aging, Harris’s race and gender, and the global 2023-2024 electoral mood, due to post-COVID shocks.
It’s not clear Americans would’ve voted their pocketbooks (letting Tariff Man enact the biggest working/middle class tax hike ever?) if Kamala Harris was a blasian dude named Korey or a white bro named Kaden.
Seems like the candidate needed most in 2024 was a 5-10 years younger version of Biden himself. Could that guy have survived the global postpandemic anti-incumbent wave?
We’ll never know. I recall pollster and pundit conviction 2022 would be a referendum against Biden and Democrats on then-peaking inflation. They were stunned to find the high-propensity midterm voter angry about Republican backsliding on abortion and democracy.
Assuming Harvard wins out, allowing CRT and academic freedom to last, there’s future academics who’ll study if the 2016-2020-2024 story isn’t how certain Americans are unwilling to admit or address our bigotries, especially sexism.
Or how agitprop can skew where economic blame lies.
Other might wonder if Americans can be taught that fascism is bad for personal and public finances — noting that long-term consideration is not our wheelhouse.
@DK:
That’s only when measured against the expectations of a “red wave” that never materialized. They still flipped the House, and won the national vote by a wider margin than Trump would two years later. Throughout last year, I maintained that in order for Biden or Harris to win, they’d have to overperform relative to the fundamentals. I continue to believe Harris did in fact overperform, even though that goes against the common narrative. And that’s without even getting into Dobbs or crappy Republican candidates (which remained a factor in 2024, helping explain Democratic victories in states Trump won, most notably NC and AZ).
We should beware of post-election narratives just as much as pre-election ones. 2024 was not all that different from 2022 in terms of outcome, just very different in terms of expectations.
Regarding the decline of pop culture, yes, it is in decline. Are there better TV shows than ever? Absolutely. Shogun was a masterpiece. But we have so many more shows than we used to have that the ratio of genius to shit is probably about the same. Are movies better? No. Flatly: no. Better effects? Absolutely. But better ideas, better writing? No.
As for music, I’ve brought this up before, but as our country is torn down around our ears, where is our new Bob Dylan? We still have the old Bob Dylan. And the old Neil Young. But where is the protest music that reaches beyond a niche audience? Where is the music that has the power to shape and motivate a generation?
A big part of the problem is the total dominance of a few major corporations, and the eternal pandering to the stock market. Barry Gordy did not have to please stockholders. Sam Phillips did not have to pander to suits. But even the big corporations had more balls. It was RCA that released Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come.
I have no way to prove this but I think a very big problem for younger creatives is that they are children, and often grandchildren, of the screen. The ratio of screen time to real life time, has swung hugely away from IRL experience. All creatives work from experience, but if the vast majority of your life experiences are filtered through a phone or a tablet or a laptop, you’re consuming versions of someone else’s experiences. Snakes eating their own tails.
Van Gogh looked at the same night sky any of us see, but he saw Starry Night. Screen reality is literal, anathema to imagination. Reality is infinitely richer and demands so much more from us. It was reality acting on imagination that gave us Starry Night, and had Vincent seen nothing in his life but other people’s paintings, he’d never have painted his sky.
@Kylopod:
Just these two? Or are you in the camp that thinks any 2024 Dem presidential campaign would’ve probably lost the electoral college, just by different margins?
@Michael Reynolds:
“But we have so many more shows than we used to have that the ratio of genius to shit is probably about the same.”
Just so. Exactly so. I think it’s also true in music, though when I say “music” I’m describing something that is a lot broader than “pop music” which we all heard on the thing we called “radio”. Have you heard of it?
Music has not fully adapted to the internet yet. I say that because I see a need for something similar to ASCAP/BMI licensing that allowed clubs and radio station to pay dues and then play anything and have bands in that played anything and royalties were payed out to the songwriters and performers based on popularity surveys.
We don’t have that for the internet, and we need it. I would love to produce a podcast that played some new music which I then talked about with a guest. Or to use it in other ways, as an interlude in a stream or something. Not stealing, but pay the dues (which should not be large in many cases) and play the music.
This is how ASCAP/BMI worked. It hasn’t really adapted to this era yet, though.
Informing people of their rights under the constitution is not going to be considered obstruction by any court anywhere in the US. Ok, maybe you can find some judge in the tank somewhere.
But still AOC is right on pitch with this.
It reminds me of how I felt when I first read that the State of Texas was going to refer cases of parents assisting their trans children with transition as possible abuse cases.
I wished that A) my daughter was underage and B) I lived in Texas, so I could be as loud as I could in saying, “Go ahead. Try and prosecute me. Try to prove to a court that I did harm to my child. I dare you!”
As out of character as it would normally be for me, I might have followed up with, “What’s wrong, are you chicken? Ya can talk, but you can’t back it up!”
@DK:
Let’s put it this way. Say, it’s 20 years ago and you’re met by a time traveler from today, and this person tells you that in 2024, the president is a Democrat, the country is suffering from high costs of grocery, gas, and housing, and a large majority of Americans believe the economy is in the toilet. And suppose the time traveler adds that the incumbent president is 81, was initially running for reelection until a disastrous debate performance where the president came off as having lost a step due to age, then the party swooped in and nominated the sitting vp without any primaries, just four months before the election. If the time traveler told you all this, wouldn’t you assume the Dems were at a disadvantage? I would have been surprised to learn the election was as close as it was. I’d have assumed the Dems would have gotten slaughtered, all the way down the ballot. And all that’s without knowing anyone’s race or gender, or who the Republican nominee is, or any of the campaign issues other than the economy, from immigration to trans athletes.
Also, as I mentioned the other day, Trump’s biggest improvements relative to 2020 were in states Harris won, as well as states he won in both 2020 and 2024. Uber-blue states like California, Illinois, and New York were narrower than usual without becoming truly competitive. In the key battleground states that decided the election, Trump’s improvements were comparatively small. That suggests to me that in the states where most of the campaign activity was happening–the ads, the canvassing, etc.–the Harris campaign managed to put a dent in what was dragging her down nationally. Maybe there were things she could have done that would have led to a different outcome, and maybe a different candidate would have succeeded where she failed. But it does suggest she was fighting an uphill battle against things the Dems had little to no control over, and in the areas where she did have control, she did a fairly competent job. A lot of people don’t like that conclusion, because they think it’s a way of escaping blame, and it makes them feel powerless. But I do think it’s the truth.
@gVOR10: What I suspect about the public and Trump immigration policy is that people realize that there aren’t millions of middle schoolers knocking on peoples’ doors asking if their lawns need mowing. Imagine how great their shock will be when they discover that soft fruits aren’t in season in the USA all year. And that we only grow bananas by proxy.
ETA: “As for music, I’ve brought this up before…”
Thank you! Time savers such as this are a big factor in what keeps me coming here. Being able to quickly distinguish between new material/ideas and old recycled rantings that can be ignored is no small feature.
@Jay L Gischer:
Officer Smith: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used-
Officer Jones: I am sorry Officer Smith, but I am afraid I need to place you under arrest for obstructing justice. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say-
Officer Smith: Excuse me, Officer Jones, but I must now place you under arrest for obstructing justice. You have . . .
@Jay L Gischer:
You’re much braver than I am. However, I do wonder how that would work out when you are in jail and your daughter is in foster care while you do years and years or grinding through the appellate court system on your way to the ultimate crap shoot–SCOTUS.
Make no mistake, AOC is painting the target on her own back on behalf of people who won’t be noticed when they disappear. She can do it because it is a whole notha’ game in her case, and I, for one, am glad that it is.
@Joe: (In the best of all possible worlds:)
“You have…”
[original arrest suspect turns up coat collar and slowly edges away from scene]
@Kylopod:
Everything you just wrote.
Had the GOP candidate been someone less loathsome, we’d have lost by 5 points. OTOH, had we had a primary it would have generated interest, even excitement and the resulting candidate might have beaten Trump. Biden joins Ruth Bader Ginsburg in leaving a very bad taste in people’s mouth, when with just a little humility, a little less self-importance, they would have walked off as heroes.
Know when it’s time to get off the stage.
Perhaps another worthy tab: Musk’s Grok AI is really pissing off the MAGAs.
“Intelligence” seems to have a problem with you, Elon.
@DK & @Kylopod:
I’m in “the camp that thinks any 2024 Dem presidential campaign would’ve probably lost the electoral college, just by different margins” with Kylopod.
But, importantly, I’m not in this camp because of some looking backward “we were doomed no matter what” fatalism that’s about escaping blame. Instead, in forward looking mode, I think the worst thing the Dems could take away from 2024 is that our country isn’t ready to be led by a female person of color. If elections are allowed in 2028, the national mood will be so sick of Trump’s Fascism for Dummies that Democrats could break some glass ceilings if they’re not too timid.
@Michael Reynolds:
Many people, but not mine. Biden was warmly received at Mount Airy Church of God in Christ in Philly this weekend, with a well-deserved standing ovation when introduced as “our president.”
My people think white America’s Biden Derangement Syndrome (narrowly, and Democrat Derangement Syndrome more broadly) and cultural lack of respect for elders aee destructive and misguided.
We thought so last summer when y’all were trashing him, and we still do. Any candidate who wants to win the 2028 Democratic primary needs to know that Biden haters many do not speak for the Democrats’ most loyal voters. (Just like Bernie erred in not adjusting his 2020 campaign towards the fact that black voters do not share white America’s irrational Hillary hatred.)
To wit, a popular tweet currently circulating;
That’s our sentiment.
Matt Iglesias and Nate Silver have publicly stated they want a Democratic candidate who will attack Biden. Matt Yglesias and Nate Silver are not the Democratic base, so good luck to any primary campaign dumb enough to run with that strategy. They will be D.O.A. in South Carolina if not before.
@Scott F.:
Yes, anything is possible should the rare combo of perfect time + perfect candidate for that particular time + perfect opponent emerge. It has happened before. It seemed those stars were aligning for Hillary in 2016, and then Comey changed history.
But 2028? Maybe, but I don’t see it. The voters unwilling to support a hyperqualified woman over Tariff Man after his racist birther lies, epic COVID failure, and Jan 6 terror attack are probably not going to soon have the conversion necessary to elect Harris, Whitmer, or Ocasio-Cortez over the men they’ll see as safer bets, like Kemp, Vance, or DeSantis. Maybe tho.
Hopefully Democrats win big enough this year and next the US can still have elections in 2028.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Well, I’m definitely a nobody anybody has heard of. However, I do have means to hire some good lawyers. I also have a bit of a theater background, so I think I might be able to generate some attention.
But no, I wouldn’t do it while my child was still a minor. I wouldn’t want to make that choice for her. But that’s the point. Painting a target on myself, would make things easier for all the parents of trans children in Texas. (Hmm, I wonder how many there are? 20K? 50K? Something like that?)
The fundamental problem is that the other side is setting the terms of the debate. I want trans people and parents of trans people to get a platform to tell their own story, which is a very different story. And this would be a way to do it.
I might have said this before, but I’ll say it again: My daughter’s transition was the best thing that ever happened to us as a family. The. Best. I asked my wife, and she agrees. Our child was slipping away, and we got her back.
Not to say it was easy, or painless. But definitely the best.
I got about a quarter of the way through the Atlantic article, and skimmed the rest, and I think the author has missed something fundamental — he’s looking at dying art forms, lamenting that they aren’t transformative, and is overlooking the genuinely transformative art we are swimming in, because it doesn’t fit his definition of art.
@Michael Reynolds makes a similar mistake, when he asks “Where is our new Bob Dylan?”
I regret to inform you that I have found our new Bob Dylan, and it is Joe Rogan.
You might argue that he doesn’t sing, but can we really call what Bob Dylan was doing singing? But he is the moral and intellectual voice of a massive subset of America. Where Bob Dylan asked “How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?”, Joe Rogan confidently answers “three, but I’m just a dumb guy so I might be off by one or two.”
The article laments how Broadway is now dominated by stunt-casting revivals, but fails to recognize that theater is out of reach of most Americans these days, with the exception of Trump rallies. (Big kudos to AOC, Bernie and Tim Walz bring rallies and town halls to various spots)
Art has always been political, and we’re seeing politics becoming art.
There are three great fictional media empires that people have been getting into: Star Wars, Marvel and FoxNews. Vast collections of interconnected stories with countless creators and semi-canonical spinoffs (comics, video games, QAnon, etc). Granted, Star Wars and Marvel are faltering at the moment, having largely run their course and needing something fresh to reinvigorate them.
The article has a fun digression into gallery art, and the inherent blandness of things that are chosen to appeal to wealthy individuals who want something to hang over their sofa. But that shit has always been boring and safe. Nowadays the interesting art that has always been being created on the fringe is shown on social media and you can buy prints directly from the artist (to hang over your sofa, if you are so inclined).
We’re not in a cultural wasteland, we’re in a very rich (and mostly awful!) cultural renaissance. And I do mean Renaissance, as so much of the great Renaissance art was religious tripe commissioned by the most wealthy, which sometimes surpassed the genre of religious tripe through sheer mechanical artistic ability. We are not in a New Romantic period at all.
The question shouldn’t be “where is the great, influential art?” but “Why is it all Nazi shit?” or, if you think a moment longer, “Why has so much been been captured and controlled?”
“The Female Man” by Joanna Russ might be a classic bit of feminist writing of the 1970s, but its influence was always dwarfed by Cosmopolitan, which also offered 8 new ways to have an orgasm with common household objects. When people lament the state of art, they are always missing the Cosmopolitans of the world.
And that leaves music, where the revenue model has collapsed and it’s more of a hobby than a living. There are a few greats who command attention (Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar leap to mind — particularly the latter, and how he brought a clear artistic political message to a Super Bowl halftime show of all things), but mostly music is regressing back to something closer to traditional folk in practice if not style. Countless small artists iterating on the works of others, responding to it, interrogating it, and building upon it, breaking it into 30 second clips for teenagers to lip synch to on TikTok, recontextualizing it and giving it new meaning. An art form evolving and being created under our noses, to tell new stories (about life under fascism).
——
ETA: Jesus Fucking Christ that was long. Sometimes you need to get an idea out so it just isn’t in you anymore, and you can go about your day.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Ok, hear me out… we expand the size of the US Embassy in Honduras, and now rent out portions to political donors who run a banana plantation on US territory.
@Gustopher:
Ouchies! That’s gonna leave a mark.
@Gustopher: So, basically the United Fruit Company and Castle and Cook without the pretenses of denying the imperalism? Okay. Give it a whirl.
@DK: I’m a Biden fan in general (let’s skip Israel/Palestine, just in general). Best President in my lifetime.
He was also too damned old. The fact that he was the nominee in 2020 only spoke to the lack of anyone else being up to the task at all. I loved Elizabeth Warren, but I’m content to accept that just because someone speaks well to me doesn’t mean she speaks well to anyone else.
Similarly, I accept that Donald Trump is a once in a generation naturally charismatic leader. His performance, despite his actions, is a clear testament to that.
I don’t think that basic lack of talent on the Democrats’ side — ability to govern and to communicate — was any better in 2024.
I don’t have any reason to think that Biden’s advancing age affected his ability to govern (remember that three way prisoner exchange he negotiated right after his disastrous debate performance? When everyone was saying he was senile?). But it absolutely devastated his ability to effectively communicate — even on his best days. The staff that protected him and insulated him from the media did him and our country a great disservice.
If he spoke to the press and the public half as often as Trump does, I think it would have been clear that he wasn’t up for the campaigning part of the job, and he would have bowed out early enough for a primary. And we probably still would have lost (massive anti-incumbent wave across the western democracies, and going up against a once in a generation naturally charismatic leader), but we might have gotten rid of Gavin Newsom forever once he was covered in loser stink.
But, in 2028, removing that once in a generation naturally charismatic leader Trump, and leaving Republicans to run on what they’ve done… even with attacks on the institution of voting, and all that headwind, I think we succeed even if we nominate an unctuous toad like Gavin Newsom.
I think one of Harris’s biggest mistakes was not putting emphasis on the differences between herself and Biden. Even if she phrased it as a matter of differences in priority or approach, she needed some space to shore up her left flank and show she was more of a fighter.
ETA: motherfucker. I am just having a long-winded day.
@Gustopher:
I agree with you. My father is about Biden’s age and he is as smart and capable as he’s ever been, but his thought processes are a bit slower. He still ends up at the same answers and solves problems as well, but he takes longer to arrive at them. I suspect the same thing is happening with Biden. Very few governmental problems depend on one’s ability to respond immediately, but debates definitely require thinking and responding quickly.
Even supposing that’s right – that Biden was fine but not as quick to come up with answers as he once was – it still leaves the question open as to whether he would have been able to serve another four years.
All of which leads me back to something I’ve thought for a while: If you’re over 80, please don’t run for office. Even if you’re fine now, things could be completely different in 2, 4, or 6 years.
@Gustopher: The reason many loyal Dems don’t buy the narratives around Hillary’s unlikeability, Biden’s commutation, Harris’s strategy etc is that the foil here is Trump, worse on all metrics — a babbling thug screaming about migrants eating cats and dogs and promising trade wars:
This slob in orange pancake makeup is who Amerikkka would have black Dems believe is a generational communicator in comparison to Hillary, Biden, Harris? Wut?
Had Biden opened with that after being asked about academic freedom, there would’ve been WaPo, NYT, WSJ editorials calling for the 25th Amendment. Hence why his base gives no quarter to this nitpicking of Democrats and points at the electorate’s Obama-backlash microagressions for pols backed by blacks, gays, and other perceived threats.
If Hillary needed to be like that orange prick for white men to find her likeable, if Biden needed to nonsensically ramble in loud noises to effectively communicate, if Harris needed to trash trans and migrants to signal a new direction — this is not an indictment of them. It’s an indictment of the American people’s questionable ethics.
Harris v Trump polling in Europe showed her sweeping almost all of them with 60-90%. That should’ve been our result, because Trump is not qualified — morally, temperamentally, or intellectually.
There’s just something wrong with us that Dem strategy and messaging can’t fix. And Americans are high on our own supply and thus unwilling to admit it. Acute MAGA backlash may help in 2026-28, but until the US reckons with our moral issue, our mid-21st century outlook is meh.