My youngest nephew when we last spoke of the Democrats as socialists, and he was having no part of them. He, like his mother, is a Trumper. And now Trump is calling Democrats Communists. I wonder if that old world still holds many in its superstitious awe. Then I consider my youngest nephew. I wonder if he considers Trump's own warming to socialism.
Why Trump’s ‘golden shares’ are enticing progressives (POLITICO)
Starting with Trump’s surprise moves to take a “golden share” in U.S. Steel and then a 10 percent share in Intel more than a year ago, the administration is approaching $30 billion in equity stakes, warrants or similar plans in U.S. companies by most estimates, a fairly radical departure from orthodoxy outside of times of financial crisis — like the massive government bailouts of 2008-2009 — or world war.
That’s not counting some international arrangements, like the Trump administration’s Aug. 28 announcement that it would take a stake in the Venezuelan oil industry, which it said will be engineered by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital.
The new approach has sparked a mixture of support, criticism and confusion across both parties, with libertarian conservatives pointing out the irony of Trump’s attacks on Democrats as communists and some elected Democrats pledging to investigate equity stake arrangements involving ties to Trump family or allies if they win back power in the midterms. Critics dispute the administration’s authority to take equity stakes in private companies at all.
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Todd Tucker, the group’s director of industrial and trade policy, says that Trump’s early move to demand some corporate governance power in U.S. Steel amid its takeover by Nippon Steel – not an equity stake, but still a highly unusual degree of influence in a company – was “pretty ingenious” and mirrored concepts that had been debated in the early days of the Biden administration, and in proposals from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Trump Says to Vote for Ken Paxton Even Though He’s Dumb and Ugly (The New Republic)
Decades ago, a friend of mine who was a Marine captain often talked about the Turks and the Israeli armies as being on parity. He wondered what would be the outcome if they met. Too bad he died eleven years ago.
The coming Turkish-Israeli struggle for supremacy (Engelsberg ideas)
That the Middle East is hurtling towards a catastrophic Turkish-Israeli conflict has been apparent for a while. Nothing is inevitable in history, but the dynamic leading towards conflict has been gathering momentum at a pace that is startling. Israel is clearly a shark that cannot stop swimming, and the collapse of Iranian forward-positioned proxies is setting the region up for the ultimate showdown between the only two actors with hegemonic ambitions. ‘As Iran weakens, that vacuum will be filled by the natural candidate with imperial ambitions in the Middle East, and that is Turkey’, former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said recently. He isn’t the only one. The sentiment now shapes Israeli strategic doctrines, from the Netanyahu government to opposition leaders such as Naftali Bennett. In sum, the potential for conflict remains, regardless of who is in power in Israel. And Turkey isn’t the only actor with hegemonic aspirations in the region.
Turkey is, however, the other remarkable actor in this tango: the only power and former imperial entity in the entire Eurasian landmass (with the exception of, possibly, China) that appears to simultaneously possess a sense of a residual imperial greatness, a vision of an overarching historical longue durée (unlike contemporary Europeans) and a cold, calculated grand-strategy unimpeded by democratic processes. Turkey isn’t affluent by most western measures, and yet, for a country that was strategically isolated a decade ago, Turkey has since positioned itself as the most influential actor in the region.
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A recent addition has further empowered the Turkish hand: an emerging Saudi-Pakistani security relationship that potentially brings Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence into the wider strategic matrix. From the American strategic perspective (even without considering the steadily declining support for Israel among both younger generations of Democrats and Republicans), it is understandable why this coalition might appeal. The Americans have been unable to extricate themselves from the region, partly due to their internal strategic incoherence and an absurd democratic system that alters US grand strategy every eight years or so. A Saudi-Pakistani bloc under Ankara’s hegemony, on the other hand, could contain both Russia and Iran in the region.
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The United States will, of course, continue to be immensely powerful and splendidly isolated in the Western hemisphere. But, inevitably, American retrenchment, either due to imperial exhaustion, debt, generational change or strategic defeat, will translate into a mad dash for localised regional hegemony and space for imperial powers with capacity and ambition. An Israeli attack on Turkey, or an all-out Turkish-Israeli war over expansionism in Syria or Cyprus, therefore has the potential to destroy NATO as we know it. But from a strictly historical perspective, it will be a new hegemonic cycle in a region that has seen many such cycles before, with an older imperial entity returning to form.
David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed”: Revisiting a revisionist blockbuster. (The Hedgehog Review)
Detached from their ethnic and regional origins and attached to class-based cultures, the British-American traditions Fischer identifies may endure, as nonwhite immigrants and their descendants assimilate to multiple melting pots along educational and occupational lines. Already in the US, college-educated Hispanics tend to share the liberalism of other college-educated Americans, reflecting the New England roots of today’s academic culture, while working-class Hispanics are more socially conservative, and many convert to evangelical Protestantism, with its Scots-Irish influences.
Meanwhile, the nativism of today’s “Heritage Americans” on the right is much more inclusive than that of the Anglo-Protestant nativists of a century ago, with Irish Americans and German Americans now considered “Heritage Americans.”
I wonder if there is not a bit of the regionalism mentioned above in the regionalism of Soft Secession? (Sheila Kennedy).
Nearly two dozen Blue states have filed joint lawsuits to block Trump administration vendettas. Blue state coalitions have sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FEMA over rules that tie disaster and emergency relief money to voter citizenship checks and local immigration enforcement, and they have mounted coordinated responses to political assaults on state universities, non-profits, and local municipal funds. Local and state jurisdictions in those states have worked to strengthen local laws that limit ICE access to public property and data.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Colorado Governor Jared Polis launched a private initiative to encourage Blue state resource pooling–a project in which states will share staff, legal expertise, and operational strategies to protect state institutions and coordinate contingency plans against federal pressure. The initiative is modeled on previous reproductive rights compacts in which states shared and stockpiled abortion medication.
The movement toward state-level action can also be seen as a response to a longer-term fiscal reality: Donor states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts send far more money to Washington than they get back. The Rockefeller Institute estimates that New York’s net outflow in 2019 was $142 billion, and that California’s in 2021–22 was $83 billion. Meanwhile, states like Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia are net recipients.
Midterms are but 9, 10 weeks away. Maybe we end this silly season of American politics, maybe we can restore American greatness, but I think rejoicing needs await January if the Democrats take enough seats they take over Congress.
sch 9/3
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