The Perils of Unsubstantiated Bloviating
I'm going to try to avoid posting very many opinion columns here, as the only thing worse than unsubstantiated bloviating is secondary reactive unsubstantiated bloviating about unsubstantiated bloviations. Besides, I've already done the podcast thing--the bloviating is strong with this one.
"Hey, asshole, you're the one who started a FB blog about reading and reacting to the New York Times. Let's not hear any more from you about the perils of unsubstantiated bloviating, ok?"
Then Paul Krugman writes a piece about how Hillary Clinton really shouldn't "turn right" in an attempt to woo disaffected "center-right Republicans" away from Trump, and I want to jump right in and face the peril.
~~~
"Look, let me go back in there and face the peril."
"No, it's too perilous."
"Look, it's my duty as a blogger to sample as much peril as I can. Let me have just a little bit of peril?"
"No, it's unhealthy."
~~~
Unhealthy though it may be, Sir Lancelot, I'd like to talk about the silly things Krugman says in today's column.
After a few paragraphs of prologue summarizing the post-convention Trumppennings and suggesting that Clinton continue to campaign on the "stay the Obama course" path she's been on, Krugman says:
"But at least some commentators are calling on her to do something very different--to make a right turn, moving the Democratic agenda toward the preferences of those fleeing the sinking Republican ship."
Putting aside the fact that Krugman neglects to link to or otherwise name any of these people who are pushing Clinton to the right, let's imagine for the sake of argument that they really do exist, in some sort of significant and potentially influential number--in what meaningful way could Hillary Clinton pivot to the right that would be such a departure from her current politics?
Did you see the Democratic National Convention? Did you see the barking lunatic, retired four star General John Allen, screech for ten minutes about America as the shining beacon of freedom for all of humanity?
"My fellow Americans, from the battlefield to the capitals of our allies and friends and partners, the free peoples of the world look to America as the last best hope for peace and for liberty for all humankind, for we are the greatest country on this planet.
(...)
We believe in her vision of America as the just and strong leader against the forces of hatred, the forces of chaos and darkness.
We know that she – as no other – knows how to use all instruments of American power, not just the military, to keep us all safe and free.
(...)
To those acting against peace, civilization and the world order: We will oppose you.
And to our enemies – to our enemies – we will pursue you as only America can. You will fear us.
And to ISIS and others: We will defeat you."
The words do no justice to the screaming fervor of it, which you can see here: (https://youtu.be/gC_9lULJnCg)
This is the sort of embarrassing nationalistic claptrap that made me squeamish when W Bush was using it to stroke the collective patriotic moan-bone, and it shouldn't be any more palatable coming out of somebody else's mouth, no matter the parenthetical letter next to the name of the person they're endorsing. He was far from the only one to do it, but certainly the one most likely to give me the creepy goosebumps.
(As an aside, Michelle Obama certainly has come a long way from "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country," hasn't she? (https://youtu.be/LYY73RO_egw) Her convention speech included the line "So, look, so don't let anyone ever tell you that this country isn't great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this right now is the greatest country on earth!" (A low bar, to be fair?) As ever, all it takes for the revolutionaries to become the establishment is to let them in the door.)
The whole convention, down to the unabashed Big Brother (sister?) vibe of the lead photo of this piece--which is the Times doing, and not mine--rings far more of my "right-wing" alarm bells than any of the leftist ones. (I hear only alarm bells, no good bells--another sure sign of a bloviate, noun form.) What or who is further right than Hillary Clinton in terms of American military interventionism? She seems rather in-line with the aggressive stance of her predecessors, if slightly to the right of what Obama positions himself to be, though not necessarily in terms of practical outcomes. So no danger of a "right turn" from there, certainly.
Hillary's positions on social issues, which is about the only thing that separates "the left" from "the right" in the national and social media discourse, are precisely where they've always been--with the majority holding of the broadest possible swath of the American public. She isn't about to turn right on those things, which would be a move against the social-liberalizing trend of the last half-century.
So Krugman is warning her against "turning right" economically, I suppose, which is an amusing warning for someone who seems to be actively campaigning against free trade--but then, isn't everybody, these days?
Krugman's prescription for what ails us is--as it *always* is--to borrow a great deal more money than we currently are borrowing and to spend it on ourselves, since government debt is just so goshdarn cheap these days. At least the "leftists" are honest about their intentions, while the "rightists" tend to pretend to have ideas that aren't just "borrow more money." (Their ideas include "collect less!" to go with "spend more!") The conversation is purely an academic one, though, because the practical outcome is always the same. Reagan showed our current generation of right-wing world makers that you could preach small-government while increasing spending and the debt astronomically, reinforcing your "conservative" bona-fides with "pro-growth/pro-business" policies that amount to forcing the tax burden as far away from those who reap profits and onto the backs of those who do the producing. That the "left" talks a slightly more openly "tax-and-spend" approach is a testament to our need for polarization, not any core ideological distinction.
So Hillary Clinton turn right? To where? Krugman thinks that the thing that sets the Republicans apart is their willingness to play ball with people who possess deeply held racial resentment, and sees Trump as the inevitable outcome of their decades-long dog-whistling courtship of that vote. Is she going to "turn right" in that sense, and open up a can of Nixonian Southern Strategy? Of course not! Aside from it being rather distasteful, she'd be turning against the most powerful demographic group of the recent primary season, the southern black vote, who gave her a massive early delegate lead and the sense of inevitably she needed to carry the nomination home through more Bernie-favorable parts of the country, and gave us the next president of the United States.
The truth is much more difficult for a partisan like Krugman to swallow--that it was not any one party or the simpleton racism of non-urbanites that is to blame for the current populist revolt coming from both the left and the right (correct in its ineffable diagnosis of systemic rot, but thoroughly misguided in its expression and prescriptive "solutions"), but the perception that decades of governance by administration after administration has been for the benefit of groups other than their own, whether segmented by race, class, income level, or corporation size. And I don't even mean that Krugman is a "partisan" to the extent that he's a committed shill for one party or another. Rather, he is a partisan for traditional, establishment, and absolutely conservative government--a person who looks at the American project of the last forty years and says, "carry on."