More links
1. For years, I’ve been complaining about the US bullying of smaller nations. This tweet thread by Jeff Stein documents the fact that US bullying has increased dramatically over the past decade.
2. By some measures, Texas is far and away the most environmentally conscious state. Another link suggests that Texas produces more electricity from renewable energy than New York produces in total. How is that possible? It has nothing to do with their attitudes, which are far less environmentally conscious than those in places like New York and California. Instead it seems due to the fact that free markets are good for the environment, and Texas has much freer markets than California.
3. Here’s Richard Hanania:
Ezra Klein talks about how he has no idea what a left-wing version of Jordan Peterson would look like, given that liberals don’t really have a positive vision of masculinity. Conservatism is less conflicted on this issue, but its version of masculinity has no place for stoicism in the Trump era. I find few things to be more unmasculine than exaggerating the problems and challenges one faces. Right-wing spaces are nonetheless filled with individuals referring to themselves as “kulaks,” “dissidents,” or “heretics.” In a way, Trump is the perfect leader for this movement, in that he has all the vices of masculinity and few of the virtues. MAGA populism looks at what happened to Alexei Navalny and says that this only reminds us that the real victim is Trump, and I wonder how much their aggressive callousness towards the victims of Putin reflects the shame of individuals play acting as freedom fighters getting angry when confronted by the real thing.
BTW, here’s what Scott Alexander says about Hanania:
Hanania is terrible at being right-wing. He’s pro-choice, pro-immigration, pro-euthanasia, pro-vaccine, pro-globalism, pro-Ukraine, atheist, and supports the recent guilty verdict on Trump.
4. And from the same post, Alexander describes Yglesias:
Nietzsche wrote in the 1890s. There were still real nobles and emperors walking around; communists had not yet started calling capitalism “late capitalism”. Sure, his world was probably some sort of weak compromise between master and slave morality, but it was different from our weak compromise. Our weak compromise was forged through dialogue and warfare with fascism’s novel take on master morality and socialism’s novel take on slave morality. I think of Yglesias – who combines an insistence that good things are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest among us – as one of its most self-conscious proponents.
Alexander has recently been on a roll.
5. Alexander also linked to an excellent post by Freddie DeBoer:
Perhaps you feel like Alice Munro pulled the wool over your eyes. You’re in good company. Many seem to be taken aback by the fact that a writer whose work spoke to them so deeply was one who could live with this kind of darkness. That attitude, I’m afraid, demonstrates an inability to understand that every artist is first and fundamentally a liar, in fiction or non. That was Munro’s great skill, and that is why you feel betrayed. A writer for The Indian Express says, “I will always question her motivations behind writing what she wrote and wonder if she actually felt this deeply or just knew how to lie with great finesse.”
But that’s the thing about great artists, darling; for them, there’s no difference.
That last line is perfect.
6. It looks like Vance is also a fan of Viktor Orban. Why am I not surprised? Trump should go with his original intention and replace Vance with Doug Burgum.
7. This interview from 2021 is exactly why you don’t want to nominate an intellectual for VP. They say really stupid stuff. Start at the 11:30 mark. Inconvenient?
8. Trump refuses to say that Vance is ready to step in as president if needed, despite being asked directly. Here’s Jim Geraghty at the National Review:
And he’s shameless about throwing his own running mate under the bus when he’s the one who picked him:
Harris Faulkner: When you look at J. D. Vance, is he ready on Day One?
Trump: Does he what?
Faulkner: Ready on Day One? If he has to be?
Trump: I’ve always had great respect for him, uh, and for the other candidates too, but I will say this. And I think this is well documented. Historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion as to who, like you’re having it on the Democrat side, who it’s gonna be. And then that dies down and it’s all about the presidential pick. Virtually never. Has it mattered? Maybe Lyndon Johnson mattered for different reasons than what we’re talking about. Not for vote reasons, but for political reasons, other political reasons. But uh historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference. You’re voting for the president and you can have a vice president who’s outstanding in every way. And I think J. D. is, I think that all of them would have been, but, but you’re not voting that way, you/re voting for the president, you’re voting for me.
This is a yes-or-no question, and Trump did not answer “yes.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump now agrees with me—it was a horrible choice. And I agree with Vance that Trump is a reprehensible person. Both Trump and Vance have very sensible views of their running mate.
9. This is one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read, but also the most depressing. Not for the faint of heart. A good rebuttal to all of the misinformation attacking Canada’s right to die policy. (Also see this comment.)
10. Here’s National Review:
It seems that many of Vance’s economic views come from his ruminations on kitchen appliances. He has said that an old refrigerator he used to have proved that “economics is fake” because it could keep lettuce fresh for longer than newer fridges. Now he says, in his stump speech, that “We believe that a million cheap, knockoff toasters aren’t worth the price of a single American manufacturing job.”
Maybe I spoke too soon when I said that Vance was smart. (Yes, I know, there are lots of things that are so silly they could only be said by an intellectual.)
11. James Carville says don’t call them weirdos, call them creeps. After all, there’s nothing wrong with being a weirdo (I’m one myself.)
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9. August 2024 at 19:25
Yes, well, the American elite, and the Western elites in general, have been putting a lot more effort into bullying their own citizens, so why would that not carry over into foreign policy? (See British PM Two-Tier Starmer’s highly selective concern for public order and associated speech control efforts.)
I am Australian who reads history, so support US maritime hegemony. It is way better than the likely alternatives. Still, I prefer more competence in operating said hegemony.
China’s recent (failed, indeed counter-productive) attempt to use trade sanctions to bully Australia is perhaps a bit of a cautionary tale.
Ironically, some level of US sanctions arguably increases the appeal of the US$ as the international reserve currency.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w29943
9. August 2024 at 19:29
BTW, like so many other folk, I am now on Substack.
My most recent post is on why Australia has 30% foreign born and yet migration is way less politically contentious than it is in the US (15% foreign born) or the UK (14%) or France (14%).
Short answer, Australia does migration sensibly and the US, UK and France do it stupidly. https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/giving-thanks-for-arthur-calwell
9. August 2024 at 23:52
People who claim to be environmentally conscious are not environmentally conscious.
Windmills are not environmentally conscious.
Electric vehicles are not environmentally conscious.
People who think otherwise, don’t know anything about mining or electricity.
The hard truth is that nobody — NOBODY — spends more money on researching alternative energy than oil companies. It’s their business model. They are always reasearching alternative to increase their market share. If you want clean energy, invest in coal companies and oil companies, because “applied scientists” work there. That’s where the innovation will come from.
Sitting down in front of a Truck, holding signs, screaming and yelling like an imbecile, will not accomplish anything. The green party will not create and innovate. Their wasted subsidies will not accomplish anything. Investors don’t need the government to choose where to invest. They don’t need a low I.Q. student from Bentley, with a 2.5 grade point average, spending their money.
Traders are smarter than that.
10. August 2024 at 05:36
Lorenzo, You said:
“China’s recent (failed, indeed counter-productive) attempt to use trade sanctions to bully Australia is perhaps a bit of a cautionary tale.”
I agree, it tells a very useful story. We were told that Chinese bullying would take away our freedoms, but we learned it’s easy to stand up to them. They’ll back down. (Obviously I’m excluding places that are part of China, like Hong Kong.)
10. August 2024 at 06:28
“It looks like Vance is also a fan of Viktor Orban.”
Sumner, would you prefer he were a fan of Lacalle Pou?
10. August 2024 at 06:29
IMO the blog post was depressing, but not particularly good.
10. August 2024 at 13:25
Scott, great post, the appliance thing is hilarious. Almost as good as GM being the world’s leading EV maker.
‘This is a yes-or-no question, and Trump did not answer “yes.” ‘
When has any politician answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to *any* question of *any* kind? I’d love to hear Biden’s answer to that question from four years ago. Or for goodness sakes’ Bush Is answer. Anyway, Trump is a massive egomaniac so you can be sure the last thing he would do is select a highly competent VP candidate who could potentially show him up. e.g., Pence. Remember I do not contend that Trump will be a good president. I contend only that he will be better than the alternative – which hasn’t changed with Kabama’s elevation to the Progist throne.
11. August 2024 at 00:21
You only hate Orban because he is not allowing mass migration into Hungary.
Civilian: “Sir, can you please provide safety and security, while I walk to work.”
Sumner: “Don’t give me that hard-right nonsense.”
Citizen: “Sir, I think there are too many migrants. The streets are very unsafe. Many of them are threatining our churches. We don’t have the space; the tax burden is….
Sumner: “Silence. Hard-right”.
Citizen: Um — but sir, the drugs and the tents, and the people pooping on the street…and the crime”
Sumner: “Silence, you’re adolf hitler. We need more.”
I don’t know what the hell is wrong with your old, creepy, generation, but controlling the border and making sure citizens are safe is the number one responsibility of government.
Orban is actually doing his job.
The Biden/Harris administration tried to establish a misinformation tzar to silence political dissidents.
Now that is creepy.
11. August 2024 at 00:51
Democrat platform:
– Ban gas stoves
– Mandate electric vehicles
– Mandate Covid vaccines
– Implement lockdowns
– Ban “hate” speech
– Mandate diversity quotas
– Men punching women in sports
– Birth control for Trans
– Disinformation police
But you think republicans are “weird?”
11. August 2024 at 08:30
JS, You said:
“But you think republicans are “weird?””
In response to a post saying don’t call Republicans weird. Do you idiots even know how to read?
11. August 2024 at 17:33
Trump stinks, but my wife was visiting the knitting store and a bunch of Jewish women said they will not vote for Harris, but for Trump. This is in NYC. And various Jews i have spoken with have also said no way they can vote for Democrats.
Will see what they do when time to vote takes place.
12. August 2024 at 08:52
SK, I wouldn’t think that Jan. 6 would go over particularly well in the Jewish community, which tends to be pretty well versed on the history of authoritarian nationalism. But yes, 20% or 30% of Jewish voters will opt for Trump.
12. August 2024 at 09:51
@Lorenzo:
Australia has an obvious reason why they are able to do immigration more ‘sensibly’ than the US…they have no land borders with any other country, and are isolated from emigrating nations. Also unlike the UK (another island country, but one much easier to get to), they have no former colonies with historical pipelines of people flowing into the colonizer ‘homeland’
That said there is no question the system for handling the people that want to live in those countries is dysfunctional in all of the places you mention.
12. August 2024 at 10:45
It is amazing how flippant we’ve become about sanctioning countries. As pointed out here, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/ineffective-immoral-politically-convenient-americas-overreliance-economic-sanctions#humanitarian-costs-sanctions, the results can be as devastating as war for the people of the targeted country. I have to imagine that we would consider it an act of war if some country was able to collapse our GDP by two thirds or more using sanctions the way we did to Syria, Venezuela et al.
13. August 2024 at 09:33
Carl, I agree, but to be clear I think that 90% of the problem in Syria and Venezuela comes from home grown policy mistakes, not sanctions (which are often evaded.)