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Day of the Demagogues
As the results of New Hampshire’s primary were coming in Tuesday night, some commentators on Twitter were jubilant about the “disruption” the victories of an inane socialist demagogue and a foul-mouthed nationalist demagogue represented to the “establishment.” Yes, mobs are disruptive. Madame DeFarge enjoyed a good shakeup herself.
Senator Bernie Sanders believes that eight years of the most leftist president in American history have left the plutocrats in total control. Channeling the late Hugo Chavez, he promises to lift the minimum wage to $15 per hour, provide free college educations for all, and deliver universal health care (with only a small tax on the middle class). How will he pay for it? “With a tax on Wall Street speculation.”
Now, I’m no particular fan of Wall Street, but this is rubbish. Sanders bellows: “The greed, the recklessness, and the illegal behavior drove our economy to its knees. The American people bailed out Wall Street, now it’s Wall Street’s time to help the middle class.” Without defending bailouts (and if you want an excellent history of how the government encouraged risky behavior by bankers, see “Gambling with Other People’s Money” by Russ Roberts), let’s remember that in 2008 the banks were given loans, not bailouts, and the purpose was not to support billionaires but to head off what Congress had reason to fear was a total freeze up of the financial system. Maybe they were wrong, but Congress was genuinely terrified that without a quick infusion of government money, there could be a full scale liquidity crisis, i.e., when you and I went to our ATMs, we’d get an error message.
If you’ll indulge another objection to the greedy-bankers-robbing-the-middle-class tale, the banks paid back the “bailout” money (with interest) as Jim Geraghty of National Review reminds us. Further, while you’ll never hear this from Bolshy Bernie, it wasn’t private greed that created the financial crisis but government coercion and incentives that encouraged lending to “non-traditional” (i.e., non-creditworthy) customers. There’s more to say on this, like the fact that many of those sainted middle class victims of the financial crisis were actually house flippers who made risky bets. That’s not to say many innocent people were not hurt. But spare us these black/white morality tales. Oh, and Sen. Sanders: Even if you confiscated all of the wealth of America’s “billionaire class” (what a ridiculous term for a few hundred individuals), you wouldn’t come close the $17 trillion in new spending you’ve proposed.
Meanwhile, the Dodd/Frank bill that was supposed to be the cure for what went wrong in 2008 — the bill the Democratic House and Senate passed and Obama signed — it’s a big cause of our anemic growth now. The big banks have done okay with the thousands upon thousands of new regulations. In fact, they’ve gotten even bigger. But medium and small banks, the ones who typically finance new ventures and thus create new job opportunities, are going under. The ones that remain are actually discouraging new deposits. That’s right. They can’t lend out the money because of the strictures of Dodd/Frank, so they don’t want new money. An employee at one of the surviving banks told me that she now spends about 30 percent of her time on Dodd/Frank compliance. What would she have done with that time otherwise? “Helped our clients to become more efficient.” Businesses that are more efficient are more profitable. More profits equal more employment. Profits — shhh, don’t upset the Democrats — are good.
Not that the leading contender for the Republican nomination grapples with any of these questions. Like Sanders, he’s not interested in reform so much as looking for scapegoats. Sanders blames greedy billionaires for the problems of the middle class and the poor; Trump blames treacherous immigrants, crafty foreigners, and incompetent leadership in Washington. Some people seemed surprised that there was overlap between Sanders and Trump supporters, but it makes perfect sense.
Some commentators on the right, particularly on talk radio, have ridden the hobby horse of immigration very hard — even to the point of welcoming Trump’s rise as a ratification of their fixation. But in Iowa, immigration was rated important by only 13 percent of GOP caucus participants. In New Hampshire, only 15 percent said it was important to their vote. Terrorism, government spending, and the economy all ranked higher.
Trump and Sanders are disruptive, and people who welcome chaos for its own sake are dangerous. The Founders of this country were extremely wary of excessive power — whether in an executive or in a mob. They designed the system to be stable and somewhat resistant to every shift in public mood, and it has served us very well. But the voters are the ultimate custodians of the American system, and by turning to demagogues in both parties, they’ve ventured into scary terrain.
Published in General
Political party malpractice?
Say, Jamie (time out): did you flag me a whole bunch back in the day? If so, hey, water under the bridge. Just asking.
Cluelessness.
That, too.
No, the impressionable are expressing themselves as being impressionable. Hence, Day of the Demagogues. Thank you for this post Mona.
Since when are flooding America with cheap foreign labor and actively discriminating against law-abiding citizens “conservative principles”?
I have flagged you in the past.
Ah you mean like how Trump wants to “let all the good ones back in”? See what I mean by no principles?
Who said anything about amnesty? 70% of Hispanics in Texas were born in Texas.
More made up controversy to stir up the “base”.
I wish I could like your post more than once Jamie!
Rewarding law-abiding behavior means one has no principles?
I should know, as I’m one of them. There is nothing made up about the crisis on the border.
We can tell.
There’s a lot made up. The “crises at the border” can mean many things. Drugs, crime etc., yes those are a real problem. Separate problems from “dey took our jerbs”, however. Separate problem from “immigration” too.
The fact that there’s been a net migration of Mexicans out of the US over the past few years, indicates that there’s a lot made up about the crisis. Or at least, one of the supposed crises.
It’s the “Mexico took our jobs” position of Trump that is the issue here: i.e. economic ignorance, illiteracy and stupidity. And of course the racism, but…that’s for another day.
Then they’ll need a party called Moderates. Conservatives will re-invigorate this party. Good riddance to the “sane” champions of the status quo, managed decline.
There it is. Why are you conflating ethnicity with national origin?
This is why I registered my “pro forma” objection earlier. I reject your premise as a dishonest attack. You’re smuggling racism in here and claiming I brought it. This is not how respectable conversation happens.
And there it is again. This is beneath … well, it’s beneath most people.
Now we come to it: the inevitable whitesplaining about “racism.” A word to the wise: “Hispanic” is not a race.
And as for the crises, they are indeed all interrelated, rooted in the failure of the federal government to enforce the law.
Indeed. The condescension is palpable.
You said amnesty. No one else said it. But hey, who cares what the issue is. Just throw something at the wall till it sticks with “the base”.
It’s not beneath Trump, however. Nothing is beneath him. Even though he’s at the top.
I too hope that some day us RINOs and the “true conservatives” can finally part ways. I’ve only been saying it for years now.
Heck, I’m just talking about the well-worn progressive attack that any immigration control is equivalent to a racist hatred of some group or other.
When Trump says “Mexico is not sending their best…”, he is talking about a national origin issue, on a border control topic. He did not say that ethnic Mexicans or any other Hispanic people are a bunch of homegrown rapists. Ain’t my fault the word has different meanings, and the context made it absolutely clear which he meant. The rest is dishonest smears.
Fair enough; I’ve earned my stripes. Just trying to figure out who the stand-out master flagger is — apparently there is one. If it’s you, I consider it old news, easy day. Thanks for the reply.
There you go making stuff up again. Throw more spaghetti at the wall. See what sticks.
“They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” ~ The Donald
LOL. Keep it up bud. Who is the “they” and who is the “some” in this sentence? Oh, he didn’t say all Mexicans! He just said the ones who come here.
What’s your thought on that one Mike? If The Donald was around in 1880 when your ranchero ancestors came here to steal good American jobs from American cowboys, would he be describing them as “they’re rapists”. Or were your ancestors one of the “some good ones”?
[Editors’ Note: Kindly de-escalate and de-personalize this; find a way to talk about it without rhetorical shouting at other members. Civil discussion.]
And is this the talk of a…presidential candidate of the United States of Freaking America? Or the talk of a horse’s ass?
But hey, this is what one gets when one builds their whole political platform on appealing to people whose main concern in life is not having their jerb taken away by a Mexican immigrant who can’t speak English and has a 4th grade education. One has to wonder the level of his political base, if this is their main concern in life.
AIG, I do not feel that you are making honest mistakes in your misquotes and straw man tracks. I could explain what I mean again, but I *just did*.
So instead I’ll just flag it. I feel that I am at the limit of polite discourse here, and that you are well beyond it.
Dear editor, if he had simply used RNC instead of Republicans, all would be well.
The first thing Mona et al need to do is ask how and why a guy like Trump was able to crash their upscale cocktail party.
They still haven’t contemplated this sufficiently.
They seem to believe they can change minds and attract voters from the pages of NR and views on Ricochet, still struggling to get 10,000 members.
Dole, McCain, Romney all played nice within the lines of decorum and they all lost. That wasn’t the only reason.
Try, try, try to understand. It’s something though isn’t it?
If you conclude that people are stupid and easily led, that isn’t quite it. If that’s so, how come your guys couldn’t get them to vote for them? Who is stupid here?
I would have more sympathy for them but the have also decided not to socialize with my friend Ted. Very exclusive these people.
Sorry your party plans have been hijacked, but it’s no loss for us, we weren’t invited anyway.
Wow! You’ve stated the case so well. Trump doesn’t care if the silverware are arranged perfectly. Go see comment #2 on Claire’s new post for some corollary info.
AIG:
Immigration, immigration, immigration. “Dey took our jerbs!”
Strange how New Hampshire Trumpians are so concerned about immigration, even though no immigrants live there, but we in Texas don’t seem to care.
Scare, scapegoat, fearmonger. But hey, you reap what you saw Republicans. 8 years of screaming that the world was going to burn any day now, leads to this. Now deal with the 35% of the “conservative” base that thinks a Vladimir Putin impersonator is what America needs.”
[Editors’ note: This comment was flagged. The editors agree that the tone could hypothetically be insulting to all Republicans as a group, but that seems to us over-sensitive: it’s not personally directed at another member of Ricochet. “Some” Republicans would be a more specific phrasing, admittedly.]
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You need not stretch your brains to find out why the tone was flagged (I flagged it). This response of AIG’s is an address to people on this thread, not the theoretical universe of Republicans. This is a dismissal through a bucket of bike, and in a repeatedly misrepresentative way.
Editors, do you think there is anything to be gained through stepping into each misrepresentation, as I did briefly as an exercise? How shall we converse with this sort of respondent. Calling his tactics out of bounds is not up to me. Trying to engage just draws more misrepresentation. Flagging for the cesspool bile gets kind of poo-poo’d as “over-sensitive”, so perhaps this explication helps.
Editors, I ask for your help. What is a calm, mannered respondent to do with this?
I submit that I’ve been level on the while thing.
Thank you.
Well said, BDB. The line is difficult to see sometimes. Jake Spoon found that out.
Hard to have a meaningful discussion with the business end of a flamethrower. The topic of Trump is sure challenging and generates tons of emotion even here in the bucolic pasture of Ricochet.
Look, I’ve no hesitation about bomb-tossing from time to time. I’ve stepped over the line calling some folks insane (don’t look at me like that) and so forth, and I’ve been educated to death that we don’t get to identify trollish behavior for what it is. Fine, the Editors want to be notified by flag instead, no problem.
All that said, I think that I have rarely been as plain old nasty as some folks seem to be with almost every comment. People who don’t contribute much other than contrary comments lambasting conservatives.
Hey, I can get that anywhere. And I can defend myself without flags. But the defense is not available to us here, so flags it is.
So, I’m kind of rambling. But the way to exploit the social vulnerability here is to use sweeping, derisive, bilious dismissals of any argument you don’t support, and the horse it rode in on, in direct reaponse to thise making the argument, while carefully avoiding mention of any user by name. To some, that seems an artful bit of fencing. I hold that honest folks have a different approach.
Obviously, this is not what Ricochet wants, but that is what it is selecting for.