Notes on the Way
Romney retires, Fani fumbles, Biden's bummers, Big Three blues, Rationalism? Not!
Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, has announced that he will not run for reelection to the Senate in 2024. Given the current political environment, I can hardly blame him. The Joe & Donald Show has turned American politics into a race to the bottom, a slapstick farce that makes the Three Stooges look like great statesmen. Anyhow, I find myself wondering what Romney thinks of the accolades he’s been receiving from the Left. Now, the comrades are praising Romney as a “principled conservative” who stood up to Trump, etc. You may recall, however, that a decade ago they were reviling Romney as one more GOP fascist, racist, misogynist, dog-abusing monster of evil who was plotting to bring back the foreign policy of the 1980s. Senator Romney’s too much of a gentleman to salute them as they deserve with a middle finger on his way out. Therefore, let this reminder of their gross and disgusting hypocrisy suffice in place of his flourished digit.
Former President Donald Trump is under indictment in Georgia over his attempt to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. There’s something funny about this indictment, however: It traces back to no identifiable crime. As Andy McCarthy points out, prosecutor Fani Willis is using Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute to prosecute Trump & Co. Essentially, the defendants are charged with engaging in a criminal conspiracy…to do stuff that isn’t against the law. “Willis doesn’t have evidence that the defendants she’s charged conspired to commit a crime such as bribery or extortion,” McCarthy writes. So instead, he explains, she’s using a charge of conspiracy to criminalize conduct that’s not criminal, i.e. challenging election results. That’s how progressives defend “our democracy”: by substituting magical thinking for sound legal reasoning.
President Joe Biden must be glad that this week’s drawing to a close, because for him it sucked. A stumblebum performance on the world stage, his wastrel son indicted, a bad inflation report, an impeachment inquiry, problematical polls, an auto industry strike, the Democratic Party’s growing alarm over his manifest unfitness to serve—it’s enough to spoil any chief executive’s digestion. Biden’s accelerating physical and mental decline has become so obvious that even those dog-faced pony soldiers of the media can no longer ignore it. And as the problems pile up, skepticism over his ability to cope with them is reaching critical mass.
The United Auto Workers strike against Detroit’s Big Three has an interesting subtext: the Biden Administration’s lunatic campaign to impose electric vehicles (EVs) on America by bureaucratic fiat. It seems that EVs threaten union jobs in the auto industry, for two reasons. The first is that manufacturing them is significantly less labor intensive than manufacturing conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, so that fewer workers are required. Second, EVs just aren’t making money for the Big Three. Not only do they cost more at the point of purchase, but thanks to their short range and the difficulties of recharging, EVs are seen as unreliable by many consumers. So while General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis are turning out EVs in ever-greater numbers, they’re not moving off dealership lots. Inventories are rising, so are losses per unit, and so are union worries about layoffs. In the circumstances, the UAW’s demand for more pay and other goodies in exchange for fewer working hours is self-defeating, not to say suicidal. This is what’s known as Bidenomics in action.
V. Putin and his despotic regime have never lacked for apologists in the West. Some, indeed, are outright supporters of his brutal act of aggression against Ukraine, hilariously claiming that Putin is opposing robust nationalism and Christian values to soulless globalism and NATO imperialism. Others adopt a more nuanced position, along the lines of Yes, but… Then there’s the chin-pulling, pseudo-intellectual approach, as exemplified by this article. Writing on uhHerd, John Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato inform us that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was a “rational act.” How so? Well, first Putin & Co. convinced themselves of a number of things that simply aren’t true, e.g. that the United States and NATO constitute a threat to Russian national security. Then, having constructed an alternate reality in which action against Ukraine could be justified as self-defense, they sent in the tanks. Sorry, gentlemen, but decisions that take no account of reality cannot be rational. The classic example of this truism is supplied by Adolf Hitler. Every big decision he took was framed by his master delusion: that the Jews were a demonic force, plotting the destruction of the Aryan race. Accept that worldview and Hitler’s actions indeed appear rational. But reject it and the man stands exposed for what he was. It’s the same with Putin.
I read that Unherd article too. Obviously invading Ukraine was not a rational choice. It was a gamble. And how does Mearsheimer explain all Putin’s busts of Peter and Catherine the Great?
Putin and leaders like him are almost always gamblers, not rational decision-makers. He figured he had a window of time in the early Biden years, with the last serious Westen leaders and policies gone, replaced by fantasies of "energy transition." So he rolled the dice.
We still hear on the right the "onward, Christian soldiers" fantasy, brave Russian soldiers fighting vicious transgender neo-Nazis in Ukraine. But the pseudointellectual "realist" right has been returning for a couple decades now, and as unreal as ever, with specious and historically ignorant arguments. It's heartening to know that the fact-deficient and morally obtuse are not exclusive to the left.