Wil reivews a book about Wilson.

In “Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn,” Cox, former congressman and former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, demonstrates that the 28th president was the nation’s nastiest. Without belaboring the point, Cox presents an Everest of evidence that Wilson’s progressivism smoothly melded with his authoritarianism and oceanic capacity for contempt

George F. Will,  At last, Wilson’s reputation gets dismantling it deserves.

The 2024 Election, Part XXI. The Refusal to Face Reality Edition.

Democrats don't lose elections, they throw them away.

Yeoman.

July 10, 2024

House Democrats met privately yesterday with a majority of those who spoke expressing the opinion that Joe Biden needs to drop out of the race.  Sen. Michael Bennet became the first Senator to do the same, noting; “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House"

That he get out is obvious.

Biden has defiantly been refusing to do so.  

It's nearly a symbol of his generation, one which simply won't yield when prior generations did.  This pattern repeats itself everywhere in current American society.

In other news, it was revealed that Biden cancelled an early evening meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the G7 conference as he had to go to bed. The same source reports that he had trouble working outside of the 10 to 4 time frame.

More locally, out of state lobbying group Make Liberty Win has been sending around mailers on candidates it endorses noting them as "100% pro gun", a pretty absurd claim in a state in which every candidate can claim the same thing. For the most part, the endorsed candidates are from the far right, with one single exception.

I looked up one candidate on their flyer that I received.  The candidate indicated that he though Reagan and Trump were the two greatest Presidents the country had ever had.  What a jarring comment. While I feel that Ronald Reagan, who was a much more cynical campaigner than people want to believe, can be blamed for the rise of the populists were now experiencing, he was a true conservative, a relatively decent President, and a necessary economic correction for the time.  He was also not afraid to use American power overseas.  Trump's a liar whose embraced populism and isolationism.  I don't really see the two of them getting along well, if they were in a private room discussing politics, or in a debate.

Congressman Hageman has indicated that she's spoken to Donald Trump about drug problems on the Wind River Reservation.  This is a topic that needs to be addressed, but it is a symptom of our current politics that an incumbent Congressman would discuss a current problem with a prospective chief executive, rather than the current one.

July 11, 2020

George Clooney wrote an op ed in The New York Times urging President Biden to drop out of the race.

I really debated posting this item here as, by and large, I really don't care what celebrities have to say about anything whatsoever.  But ultimately, I decided to note this as Clooney, who had recently held a fund raiser for Biden that Biden was at, wrote an article that was observational.  Praising Biden, whom he considers a friend, he noted:

But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.

Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, whom we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.

Clooney knows Biden, and he's right.  

Mostly right anyway. George F. Will's scathing article urging Biden to do the same thing, which was blunt and not kind, argued the following point:

The compassion owed to someone apparently in the cruel grip of an inexorably advancing disease that destroys selfhood should not obscure this fact: Biden’s malady is not robbing the nation of either an impressive political talent or a singularly public-spirited official. Biden was a mediocrity in his 1980s prime, when his first lunge for the presidency quickly collapsed, as his second would in 2008, and as his third almost did after he finished fifth in New Hampshire’s primary in 2020. In the office he eventually attained, he has chosen his defining legacy: the self-absorption of his refusal to leave the public stage gracefully.

Biden was only elected in 2020 as he seemed to be a safe, one term, President when it was assumed that Donald Trump would go away.  Not gracefully, but still away.  That's proven false.  Biden is four years older and no longer the hope that he once was.  Democrats have had four years to find a replacement for the aging Biden, but Biden is standing in the way, just as Trump refuses to go away and allow his party to form into something stable.

Also blistering was the article from the slightly left of center Atlantic, which noted, in an article using a Biden line as its title C'mon Man!:

Never underestimate the destructive power of a stubborn old narcissist with something to prove.

Ideally no one gets hurt along the way: Maybe grandpop refuses to give up his license, drives into an oak tree, and only the car gets totaled. But sometimes there are casualties: Maybe a pedestrian gets hit.

President Joe Biden, 81, is acting like one of history’s most negligent and pigheaded leaders at a crucial moment, and right now, we are all pedestrians. 

In contrast to this you have those Democrats boldy saying "nothing to see here".  An interesting example of that is the most recent post of Robert Reich which insists its only Democratic donors who want Biden out.

Not hardly, Bob.

cont:

The editorial board of The New York Times has declared Donald Trump "unfit to lead".

cont:

The GOP has released its platform:

2024 GOP PLATFORM

Protecting the unborn, save for banning late term abortions, long a Republican policy, is notably out of the platform this year.  A promised mass deportation figures prominently.

July 14, 2024

In one single horrific terroristic action, 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks almost certain guaranteed the election of Donald Trump.

Crooks attempted to murder Donald Trump yesterday.  The details are not in, no doubt conspiracy theories are already circulating like mad, and we don't really know what caused this to occur.  Crooks was killed by security.

Trump was in the midst of a speech in which he had apparently been decrying the dangers of illegal immigration.  

Whatever the motivation for the assault may be, and we may never know them, the campaign language on the far right, and to a degree the far left, has been heated now for at least three election cycles, with this one taking the top.  Trump supporters have grown increasingly aggressive in their speech.  It is, therefore, not a really a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention that a violent action occurred.

Indeed, while I haven't posted anything on it here, I've been expecting something like this to occur, although I thought it most likely to occur if Trump was reelected.  Repeated resort to violent and extreme language, in and of itself, provokes violence, and the far right has not only used that language, but on January 6, they acted upon it.  Trump's citation to authoritarianism, which is extreme, nearly made such an action inevitable.

The fact that this occurred will make Trump sort of a hero martyr and carry him back into the Oval Office.   A certain section of Trump's supporters from the Evangelical right will see this as proof that his mission is ordained and protected by God.  The dramatic photograph of Trump rising his fist in defiance will now be seen on campaign posters from here on out.  Like so many violent actions, whatever Crooks was attempting to achieve, it likely achieved the opposite.

One thing that will be interesting to see is how the Republicans now treat the topic of gun control.  Numerous mass shootings have done nothing to cause them to move, but the party now so slavishly follows Trump, and Trump is now a shooting victim, that I expect the hardline position that has been taken by the GOP to be abandoned, much like their long standing positions on abortion have seemed to, and their position on national defense did before that.

July 15, 2024

President Biden addressed the nation last night.

THE PRESIDENT:   Good afternoon.  Last night, I spoke with Donald Trump.  I’m sincerely grateful that he’s doing well and recovering.  And we had a short but good conversation.

Jill and I are keeping him and his family in our prayers. 

We also extend our deepest condolences to the family of the victim who was killed.  He was a father.  He was protecting his family from the bullets that were being fired, and he lost his life.  God love him. 

We’re also praying for the full recovery of those who were injured.  And we’re grateful to the Secret Service agents and other law enforcement agencies who — and individuals who risked their lives, literally, for our nation.

As I said last night, there is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence for that matter.

An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a na- — as a nation.  Everything.  It’s not who we are as a nation.  It’s not America, and we cannot allow this to happen.

Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is important than that right now — unity.

We’ll debate, and we’ll disagree.  That’s not — that’s not going to change.  But it’s going to — we’re going to not lose sight of the fact of who we are as Americans.

Look, Vice President Harris and I were just briefed in the Situation Room by my homeland security team, including the director of the FBI, the secretary of Homeland Security, the attorney general, the director of the Secret Service, my homeland security advisor, the national security advisor.  And we’re going to continue to be briefed.

The FBI is leading this investigation, which is still in its early stages.  We don’t yet have any information about the motive of the shooter.  We know who he is.  I urge everyone — everyone, please, don’t make assumptions about his motives or his affiliations.

Let the FBI do their job, and their partner agencies do their job.  I’ve instructed that this investigation be thorough and swift.  And the investigators will have every resource they need to get this done.

Look, as this investigation continues, here’s what we’re going to do.

First, Mr. Trump, as a former president and nominee of the Republican Party already receives a heightened level of security, and I have been consistent in my direction to the Secret Service to provide him with every resource, capability, and protective measure necessary to ensure his continued safety.

Second, I’ve directed the head of the Secret Service to review all security measures for the — all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to start tomorrow.

And third, I’ve directed an independent review of the national security at yesterday’s rally to assess exactly what happened.  And we’ll share the results of that independent review with the American people as well.

And, finally, I’ll be speaking more about this tonight at greater length from the Oval Office: We must unite as one nation.  We must unite as one nation to demonstrate who we are. 

And so, may God bless you all.  And may God protect our troops.

Thank you very much.

cont:

Trump has chosen J. D. Vance to be his running mate.  Since switching his earlier views and deciding to favor Trump, Vance has been nothing if not fanatically pro Trump.

Last edition:

The 2024 Election, Part XX. The Debate Edition

Labels: 2020s, 2024, 2024 Election, Commentary, Donald Trump, Joseph Biden, Politics, Predictions, Query, Question for the readers

George F. Will: Opinion Biden might exit, but rising distrust of institutions seems here to stay

 

Opinion 

 Biden might exit, but rising distrust of institutions seems here to stay

Blog Mirror: George F. Will: So, 112 ignoble, infantile Republicans voted to endanger civilization

 "We can now see that the great unraveling that was World War II perhaps began with Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Without the benefit of retrospection, we cannot be certain that World War III has not begun."

George F. Will: So, 112 ignoble, infantile Republicans voted to endanger civilization

Blog Mirror: As ominous threats rise, the U.S. is mired in moronic, clownish politics

 

As ominous threats rise, the U.S. is mired in moronic, clownish politics

Opinion 

 Neither Trump nor DeSantis will get the GOP nomination

George F. Will. What he proposes, and what it means.

George F. Will, far left, in happier political days.

I try to keep my election posts, for the most part, all in one thread as sort of a running contemporary history thread.  But the most recent item, on George F. Will's recent column urging Republicans to abandon their party, and his former, party, which I featured here;

Lex Anteinternet: The 2020 Election, Part 8: May 31, 2020 Friday May 29 marked the last day to register for the Primary Election in Wyoming.  So, this is a good place to start ...

probably deserves a closer look in various ways.

Here's what I posted:

June 5, 2020

Yesterday conservative Washington Post columnist George F. Will came out with an editorial that not only called for election defeat of President Trump, but also for his "Congressional enablers".

Will is a very prominent conservative voice and can probably legitimately be regarded as being the premier conservative columnist in the country, a status he rose to even prior to William F. Buckley's death.  Together with Buckley he might be regarded as one of the two defining intellectuals of modern conservatism, although other voices have been prominent in recent years who have taken a different track from the sort of Buckleyite conservatism of the post World War Two era.  Will left the GOP, which he'd been a member of for decades, in 2016 when Trump was nominated.

In some ways the Will departure has always focused the sharp divide between Republican populist and Republican conservatives.  While the two do blend, they are different.  Early on in the Trump Administration there were a fair number of pundits who expected the conservatives to balk at the Administration, but they instead fell into line fairly quickly, especially when it became obvious that the Trump Administration would support conservative policies in economics. law and in the social arena.  Essentially a sort of quiet deal was reached where the conservatives supported the Administration as long as the Administration supported conservative goals.

This has managed to hold together in spite of a lot of strain and to the disdain of those like Will.  In recent weeks, however, the strain has beginning to really show and by this point there's real reason to believe that Trump will be a one term President and he might end up taking Republican control of the Senate down with him.  Only a couple of months ago there was, interestingly enough, some serious speculation that the GOP might regain the House.  Now that's definitely not going to be the case and there's concern that things are going to go very badly.

For some of Will's view the deal reached with the Administration has been so corrupting that they're now arguing against their party or former party.  Will knows that a victory like he's now urging, which would not only end the Trump Administration but also bring in a united government that would be the most liberal one the country has seen since the Great Depression, would permanently bring into the government ideas and concepts that he's opposed his entire life. That's how opposed to what is going on he is.

What seems to underlay this line of thinking is a belief that conservatives have been pushed out or aside in the GOP anyhow, and therefore there's not really a place left for them in the party.  By urging its defeat, they're essentially arguing that the game is lost for the sort of intellectual conservatism they represent and by bringing down the populist centered GOP they can rebuild a new conservative party.

A

How this will develop will be interesting to see.  Will isn't so influential in Republican circles that voters are going to follow his lead because he's urged them to take this step, but it might indicate that others are thinking the same thing.  More probably, it likely means that the Republican center is abandoning support for the Administration's continuation in November and independents are very likely to have irretrievably left.  The recent events in Minneapolis and the President's handling of it may have begun to cement his fate, or are at least definitely impacting his campaign at the present time.

But what Will urges, and whether it sound for a lot of conservatives, raises a lot of interesting questions.

Will, I'd note, is a columnist I've long admired. I should note there that I read columnists from both sides of the political fence. He's a conservative columnist I've always liked and still like. This column, and indeed Will himself, however, more than anything point to the oddity and deficiency of a two party system.

Let's start with the obvious, which we've discussed before. A two party system, which has become institutionalized in the United States, makes no sense at all and in fact is anti-democratic. Will's departing the GOP in 2016 illustrates that in a way that is dramatic and recent, but not unique.

Will is an intellectual conservative. Trump is not. Trump is a sort of quasi libertarian, sort of, populist. There's some common ground there, but frankly there's a lot of common ground between quasi libertarians and the radical Democratic left. Indeed, the candidate most like Trump on the Presidential scene is, in some significant ways, Bernie Sanders. The politician that most resembles Trump today who is simply on the political map may be AOC.

Huey Long, the legendary Louisiana populist.

That may seem like an odd thing to say but all of those politicians are populist without a deep attachment to a philosophical core in a lot of what they say. They'd hotly dispute that, but its their pitch to populism that most characterizes them. Their meme, if you will, is Huey Long.

Now Trump has shrewdly overcoming this by allying himself with Mitch McConnell, who has done the same, for their mutual political self-interests. But the significant thing here in this post is that Trump and Will aren't really in the same political party, if we assume that Will is a Republican. Will and McConnell, however, are in the same party, which may explain part of Will's overall anger that at his fellow conservatives who haven't followed his path.

The question then becomes for people who are in the same party as McConnell and Will on where to go.

That's where what Will urges will not work for large numbers of the people who admire him and want to follow his lead.

Will is an anomaly among Buckleyite conservatives. He's one of them, but in significant ways he's not like them at all.

William F. Buckley with Ronald Reagan.

Buckley defined and informed the modern conservative movement. He was an intellectual who gave a philosophical base to a conservative movement in the United States which had never had one before. There had been conservatives, but they were instinctual conservatives, with their conservatism often founded on nothing in particular other than a gut feeling. Liberals in the country, however, tended to be the opposite. They always had a strong philosophical base. Ironically, they lack one now to the degree they once had, having abandoned much of the intellectual core that once defined them. This is, indeed, making them much more like the populist we noted above, who also lack a philosophical core.

Buckley's vision was so strong that over time it displaced the old conservatism that had been around for the entire 20th Century through the 1950s. It first started to assert itself in the late 1960s but it really started to come into its own in the late 1970s and saw its first victory with the election of Ronald Reagan, a President who was hated by liberals to nearly the same degree which Trump presently is, but for completely different reasons. Founded on a real intellectual core, the Reagan reforms of government were deep and very long lasting, still exhibiting a major influence on the government today. Anyone born after the Reagan Administration is unlikely to be able to grasp how different the government was prior to that, and how both the right and the left tended to look back on the model of Franklin Roosevelt's Administration and emulate it. By way of an example, Richard Nixon would be regarded as a Democratic centrist today if he were running for office.

Buckleyite conservatives, held, at their core, that there were certain things that were dictated by nature, of which human nature was part. That defined their approach towards everything and their view was, to a large degree, Thomist in nature. Interestingly, this was also true of one of the two branches of American liberalism that emerged in the mid-19th Century and which was still influential throughout Buckley's life, which would explain why Buckleyite conservatives and some liberals were easily able to come together on some issues, civil rights being primary among them.

Holders of that view held that nature was real and physical, and that human beings were subject as part of that to human nature. They also held that the world was broken and always would be. Humans were incapable of producing a Heaven on Earth, but they would do as well as possible by observing, accepting and acting in accordance with nature, to include human nature. As noted, one significant branch of American liberalism held the same thing and differed only on the degree to which human interaction could and would improve things. Conservatives tended to take the view that except in certain areas conserving action was the best approach, whereas liberals tended to take the opposite view.

In contrast to both of these veins of thought were those liberals who held that nature was solely subject to human definition, including human definition, and anything could be changed to make a self-created Utopia. This has actually come to underpin liberal philosophy in recent years and it constitutes its underlying weakness in basically being based on nothing. In its most extreme form, it underlined the philosophy advanced by Marx and it came to influence the global left through his massive early 20th Century influence even though its contrary to nature and its application tend to be extraordinary problematic.

Buckley’s influence on the conservative movement was so strong that he can basically be regarded as modern American conservatisms, and perhaps even western conservatism’s, founder. As he advanced in intellectual spheres he gathered to himself those who he influenced and in distinct ways formed their thought. So its important to note that Buckley’s thoughts weren’t just Thomist in their basic nature but they shared an underlying belief. Buckley was a devout Catholic.

More than a few, but not all, of Buckley’s early acolytes were likewise deeply Catholic men, although not surprisingly as time went on many of them fell in comparison. Buckley was one of those interesting examples of somebody who remained personally and professionally loyal to his deep convictions and cannot be accused of hypocrisy no matter what a person may think of his ideas and ideals. Many of those he likewise influenced are also highly admirable in that way, but not all have proven to be. At any rate, the significant thing here is that not only did Buckleyites take a view that conservatism was founded on nature and that human nature was part of nature, but underlying it they accepted the proof of God’s existence, something that has to be denied in denying nature itself, as the ultimate underpinning of the natural order.

Which makes Will the exception and which may explain why his views aren’t really ones that other conservatives can readily accept.

George F. Will, age 79 now, was the son of a philosophy professor and was provided with an excellent early education. His BA was in religion from Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, but unlike Buckley and many of his close fellows, Will is not a religious man and has claimed to hold atheistic views which in fact don’t come across that way. A protestant by heritage, his first wife was a diehard Presbyterian and his children were raised in that faith. That may explain his view as much as anything as his primary exposure would have been to Calvinism rather than to the Apostolic faiths which are the foundation of modern western thought. Will himself really basically places himself in the category of being unsure about God but disinterested this oddly places him in the position of being a supporter of religion while not being a member of any. He’s frank about his views on natural law and nature underpinning conservatism.

Will came up through Buckley and was the editor of Buckley’s magazine National Review at an early age. But in his later years his problem has been that its become increasingly obvious that his work, while always interesting, actually built simply on the shifting sand of being a conservative without having a deep foundation. Indeed, he has an avowed dislike of intellectuals even though he is one, which in some ways may be his way of avoiding the obvious, nature exists and there’s a reason for it, you simply can’t say it is.

But that view is why Will can take the positions he’s taking and not face the same issues that others do. Will really isn’t loyal to anything in particular as nothing makes him be loyal. So there are no moral issues for him, at the end of the day. And that makes his philosophy inherently weak.

Other conservatives can’t take that view in an election For those whose conservatism is founded on the metaphysical, rather than the physical, the natural order cannot easily be departed from. Voters who regard all human life as sacred don’t have the option that Will does of voting for an order that not only supports abortion but which would increase it, for example, and that’s only one such example.

Indeed, seemingly only having the common urban American’s view of the world, Will’s world outlook is remarkable small, and that also makes his election choices remarkably broad. He’s shown disinterest in some large issues of the day that require scientific inquiry. And for those things that many Americans engage in and have a fanatic loyalty to, he only seems to be a fan of baseball outside of his office. I’m a baseball fan too, but to just have this intellectual life, and baseball, is amazingly narrow.

Of course, I don’t know him, and all of these things may prove to be untrue. But they seem to be, and explain why Will can argue to just throw his former party to the wolves, accept the inevitable outcome that would mean, and then rebuild towards a new conservatism. He doesn’t have to worry about the now in that analysis.

A grim prognosis from George F. Will.

Conservatives might be well advised to read George F. Will's most recent pessimistic column, which starts out:

Looking on the bright side, perhaps this election can teach conservatives to look on the dark side. They need a talent for pessimism, recognizing the signs that whatever remains of American exceptionalism does not immunize this nation from decay, to which all regimes are susceptible.

Will goes on to discuss his point at length, noting, I think, of interest:

Nothing lasts. If Trump wins, the GOP ends as a vehicle for conservatism. And a political idea without a political party is an orphan in an indifferent world.

Grim.

I'd note that, at least in my view, the situation for liberalism, in a true sense, isn't much better.