Wild in the Senate Chamber

 

Many are celebrating the acquittal of Donald Trump in his Senate trial. Others, of course, are lamenting it.

I am more shocked that 57 Senators could vote for a conviction. The only practical result of a conviction would have been to prevent Trump from running in the next election. That would be irrelevant unless the Democrats believed he had a real chance of getting re-elected. In other words, their intent was to subvert the will of the people, to subvert democracy. To deny the entire population the right to vote.

This was an attempted coup.

It was also a blatant assault on freedom of speech. Trump was being tried for something he said, and for campaign rhetoric. Besides the issue of human rights, freedom of speech is necessary, as John Stuart Mill demonstrated, to have a functioning democracy. This is why no representative can be sued for slander, for example, for anything they say on the floor of the House of Commons. It is essential that political speech by elected officials be unrestricted. Unless all views are heard, the people are not being allowed a choice.

This was an attempted coup, shameless and in broad daylight. It was an attempt to overturn the constitution of the United States, and its system of government. The regrettable January 6 incident, whoever was responsible, was not.

And this attempted coup in the Senate came alarmingly close to succeeding. With alarmingly little objection from anyone.

A Long Hot Summer?

I see a difficult situation emerging in the US. The left has become completely lawless—I say the left, not just a faction of the left. On the other hand, the right has been entirely passive, giving the impression that they have collapsed. This further emboldens the left, and matters keep escalating.

I suspect the problem is that Trump has committed himself, for his reelection, to lure black votes over to the Republican side. It was a good strategy, and could have changed the game; but events have made it difficult. Now, if he acts decisively against the rioters or in support of the police, he risks being accused of being anti-black, and the left will start screaming “racist” and “fascist.”

Trump was elected by people on the right who were already deeply angry and wanted to poke the system in the eye. He looked to them like the most radical choice. Now he begins to look to these same people like an origami Bengal. They no doubt begin to think they can trust no one in politics, no one in the “elites.” They are liable to decide, now, to take matters into their own hands.

The middle is only too likely to dissolve, the violence to get more serious, and actual civil war to begin.

There is also the danger that, craving peace and order at any price, ordinary people will turn to any strongman; from either the left or the right. Someone may, as they say in Paris, pick up the presidential sash in the street.

Fun Hoax from Wikipedia

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Upper_Peninsula_War

Thou Shalt Not Covet

Watching how the world looks at America today is a lesson in how human envy works. Everyone and their dog seems to be against America and things American. But why? Is it that America behaves worse than other countries? Is it that American culture is shoddier than other cultures?

Surely not. We may all disagree with American foreign policy here and there. I myself disagreed with the American invasion of Panama, and with its intrusion in Kosovo, as dangerous precedents and violations of international law. But you cannot say America is really in the habit of throwing its weight around. More often, historically, the rest of the world has had reason to wish the US would become a little more actively involved.

The mere continued existence of Canada proves this. If America had imperialist ambitions, what easier or more valuable prize than Canada, with all its natural resources?

And yet Canadians, gracelessly, too often lead the raspberry chorus.

This is all a warning to individuals: just as everyone heartily hates the USA, no matter what it does, so, inevitably, everyone is going to hate anyone smarter than they are, richer than they are, better looking than they are, or even more moral than they are.

So too the Jews are hated--because they have tended to be smarter than the surrounding populations, most often richer, and quite often more moral as well. So too "dead white males" and "Europeans" are hated elsewhere--not because they have done anything wrong, really, but because they have accomplished so much. So "the rich" are hated generically. So the Catholic Church is hated--because it is openly moral, and stood on principle over abortion, not really for the canard about pedophilic priests. And beauty is rightly considered, in Chinese tradition, a misfortune for the beautiful.

We should resist envy, and the many ideologies based on envy, as we resist a thing of pure evil. Envy is a serious sin, covered in two of the Ten Commandments; murder rates only one. In a sense, envy--envy of God--was the original sin in Eden, and the original sin of Satan himself.

Buy Gold--Or Paper Mills

Here's a graph that scares me, courtesy of Captain Capitalism: it claims to show the US monetary supply.

It looks as though scrip is being printed at an unprecedented rate.

My guess is that the theory is that this will prevent deflation, as money has been sucked out of the system by the credit collapse.

But it sure looks reckless to me.

Hillary Clinton is Doomed

A few days ago, I pointed out why Mitt Romney cannot win the Republican nomination for US president, and why Rudy Giuliani is the likely winner, based on the latest polls from Iowa.

Now I’d like to explain why Hillary Clinton is doomed.

She was likely doomed from the start for a simple reason—for a long time she has been the prohibitive favourite. This is no good for the press. They need a hose race to sell papers and ads, and so will do whatever they can to take her down. Democrats trust, believe, and obey the mainstream media. This is why it is always dangerous to be the frontrunning Democrat. Ask Gary Hart, Howard Dean, or Ed Muskie.

Hillary’s candidacy has so far probably looked stronger than it is because of a bandwagon effect: people seeking favours need to back a winner, and she looked like the winner. This means that, if her inevitability factor is lost, she could take a big hit suddenly—creating a substantial negative momentum.

And her apparent inevitability is probably now lost. She performed dismally in the already-famous debate a month ago. At the time, it did not seem to affect her poll numbers; but it may have just taken time. The results of such watershed debates usually do take time to register--what counts is not the immediate reaction of viewers watching the debates, but the legend that spins out in the press over the weeks to follow. A lot of people listening to the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960 beleived Nixon won. Now nobody thinks so.

Recent polls indeed show Clinton's support in decline, and she now trails Obama in Iowa.

So—Obama comes first in Iowa, and the press has their big story. They run with it. Everything is Obama for two weeks. We hit the big primaries with all the momentum on his side, and Clinton looking a lot like old news. By the time the press gets bored with Obama, it could easily all be over.

It gets worse. Edwards is running third in Iowa. For him, everything depends on an Iowa bounce, and it looks like he’s not going to get it. The money will dry up. So he is likely to drop out soon after.

This cannot help Hillary. Anyone who is likely to support Hillary is already on board. She is not going to pick up any of Edwards’s backers if he bails. They all go to Obama, presumably, giving him another huge boost at the crucial moment.

And Clinton may do worse in Iowa than even the current polls suggest. I think the Flora factor may be in play: people know it is politically correct to back a woman, and so may lie to pollsters that they intend to support her, when they do not.

Yes, in theory, the same factor could be inflating Obama’s vote as well; but I suspect not. I suspect there is no longer any marked discrepancy between public and private sentiments regarding black politicians in the US. People who support Obama seem to genuinely like Obama. Obama in any case may be among black politicians what Kennedy was among Catholic politicians, or Reagan among conservatives--someone personally likeable enough that people can embrace him despite their prejudices, without a twinge of fear.

The same cannot be said of Hillary Clinton among women.

Indeed, this makes it easy even for guilty liberals to switch away from Clinton. How can they be accused of prejudice? Isn't Obama black?

Obama could still lose the nomination. He could still make some rookie mistake that upsets this scenario. But he is not, in political terms, that much of a rookie.

If not, he is my current favourite to take the Democratic nomination, to face off against Giuliani next November.