Tag Archives: Chris Hayes

Political Rants

The titanic struggle: A-holes vs. effers

Another week of wall-to-wall reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That characterization of the operation is tantamount to a federal offense now in Russia. Whereas there they use force to make people think a certain way, over here we use the Edward Bernays method. That’s why polling shows a majority of Americans wanting the President to be “tougher” in his approach to the Ukraine crisis.

Majority support for policies that could easily result in total nuclear annihilation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Reporting on the atrocities Russia is committing in Ukraine flows in a constant stream from the corporate media. To be clear, it is 100% something that should be reported on heavily. But this is more than coverage. It is an influence campaign, and it may just get us all killed.

A game of absolutes

One of the sure signs that the networks are propagandizing us is the characterization of this war as part of a broader struggle between freedom and tyranny. Even Chris Hayes went on a tear about his last week, bizarrely extending this metaphor to the Cold War era. This claim doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Did we fight our near-genocidal war in Vietnam for “freedom”? I think not. Read Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves. This is not good vs. evil, for we are not good.

Now, I expect this kind of thing out of the likes of Joe Scarborough, who is constantly laboring at the Reagan myth, desperately trying to keep it alive for another generation. Even on his show you will hear from people counseling caution, like Richard Haas. Those are the exceptions, though. It’s mostly a chorus of voices bearing witness to the suffering of Ukrainians in minute detail, showing frustration out of a lack of action on the part of the administration. The absolutism of good vs. evil is an essential component in their argument.

More like 1914 … or 2003

Frequent MSNBC guest Michael McFaul is back on the network, having suffered no real penalty for his endorsement of a comparison between Putin with Hitler, in which Hitler came out ahead. He was on Twitter telling people to stop talking about World War III, which was odd because he seems so wrapped up in World War II. McFaul is a fan of brinkmanship with respect to Ukraine – he thinks we can get a lot closer to open conflict without risk of nuclear war.

This is what happens when people take their own analogies too seriously. This is not World War II. We have nuclear weapons – thousands of them. We cannot do the kinds of things we did before those weapons existed. It’s simply not an option. There are many reasons why this period is nothing like 1939, but the nuclear question is probably the most salient difference. In all honesty, if you’re going to compare this with a world war, the closer analogy is 1914, when an accidental war prompted Europeans to slaughter each other by the millions for no good reason.

Don’t burn bridges

I’ve said it before. There’s only one way out of this horrendous conflict, and that’s through some kind of negotiated settlement. Cranking up the rhetoric makes this less likely, not more. For the Ukrainians’ sake, it’s better to make the deal now than later when their country is in even more of a shambles and many thousands more have lost their lives.

Ultimately Russia and Ukraine are going to have to reconcile themselves to being neighbors. That’s never going to change – it’s just geography. They need to find a path out of this mess, and we need to do everything in our power to help them get there.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Fearmongering.

There’s a passage in the Bob Woodward recordings of Donald Trump that I’ve no doubt you’ve heard about a million times by now; the one in which our president claims that his decision to downplay the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic was all about avoiding a panic. That’s right – Donald Trump would have you believe that he is trying to prevent mass hysteria, or at least that’s what it sounds like on this tape. Either that or he was worried about a panicked stock market. (Given his conviction that the stock market is the only economic indicator worth consulting, perhaps that’s more like it.) I think it was Chris Hayes who commented that Trump’s campaign slogan is panic. This is the guy that brought us MS13 living next door, rapists and murderers coming over the border, killer caravans heading north towards Laredo, antifa threatening the peace, Cory Booker threatening the suburbs, and so on. Really?

Probably the only thing really surprising about these Woodward recordings is how halfway normal the president sounds. Interesting how when there’s no television or live audience he starts to act almost human, even chummy. Listening to this, you start to see why Joe Scarborough and Mika were so enamored of him for a while prior to his presidential run. He was a T.V. star, after all, and totally in on the joke, right? Not right. In all honesty, it’s no surprise that Trump was aware of how deadly and contagious the novel Coronavirus is. We’ve long known that he was briefed on it, and it only made sense that he would be. I mean, the man has a glass head – it’s not hard to see what his motivations might lead him to. The virus was not his fault, right? So why should he have to pay a political price for it. Just pretend it’s not there …. that trick works with everything else.

Unfortunately for the Donald, viruses – much like facts – are stubborn things. They don’t yield to our hopes and desires. They aren’t scared away by a little off-hand blow-hardiness. You can see Trump getting as frustrated as a five-year-old over how this thing is unfolding, grasping for anything that will help him put the scourge behind him. As usual, he’s working overtime to change the subject and focus the public’s mind on anything other than COVID. Typically, for Trump, that means playing the fear card, warning of an attack on the suburbs by some dark army of his imagination. So he’s saying the quiet parts out loud again, which is how he started in politics and likely how he will end.

Despite what their own domestic intelligence agencies tell them, Trump and Barr continue to insist that “antifa” and Black Lives Matter are somehow potent threats against the republic, NOT heavily armed, white militias. That’s the narrative they hope will carry them to victory this fall. Let’s prove them wrong.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Sharing the wealth.

I should start this post with the standard disclaimer that I am not an economist. Inasmuch as this is a nominally free country, at present, I am going to opine on one of the central issues in the Democratic primary debate – the idea of instituting a wealth tax. Advocated in some form by both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, taxing wealth is not a new idea by any means. Chris Hayes’s recent conversation with Gabriel Zucman gives a really good overview of the question, so if you want to hear someone knowledgeable discuss the merits of instituting a wealth tax in the United States, by all means give that a listen. For now, here’s my once-over-lightly. right in time for the holiday season.

First, while this idea is remarkably popular, there is a lot of howling on the part of articulate opinion over it. If I were to guess, I would say that the reason may be simply that virtually everyone you see on television has some magnitude of wealth in the form of stocks, property, etc. in excess of what Warren or Sanders would deem taxable in their proposals. The reasons they typically give, though, are the standard capitalist tropes about stifling innovation, misdirecting funds to inefficient government programs, etc., etc. There is honestly no credible evidence to substantiate this claim, but even if some version of it were true, the revenue generated by such a tax would be more than worth the cost of inspiring some caution on the part of the billionaire class. Also, I think it’s important to fully understand what being a billionaire means. Having billions of dollars is not merely being wealthy; billions are about power, and I don’t mean purchasing power. I think there’s a strong argument to be made for putting a cap on wealth simply to constrain unaccountable power and influence on the part of billionaires, but that’s another conversation.

Bernie: just tell them they'll pay less property taxes. Piece of cake.

Zucman, a recognized authority on income and wealth inequality, points out that in America we already have a form of wealth tax, and it’s one that most potential readers of this blog (or any other blog, for that matter) are directly affected by: property taxes. For decades, home ownership has represented far and away the principal form of wealth held by ordinary (i.e. non-rich) people in the United States. I suspect it’s no accident that homes are taxed in a remarkably regressive way – specifically, not indexed to income in any way. Also, as Zucman points out, the property taxes we pay (either directly or indirectly as renters) are at the same level regardless of whether the owner holds a mortgage or not. So you may have less than 40% equity in your home, shell out half of your income on your mortgage, but still pay taxes on the full assessed value of that property. (I don’t know about other states, but here in New York, you can roll your taxes into your mortgage payment for added convenience. How thoughtful!)

A true wealth tax, on the other hand, would consider all forms of wealth, not just this narrow category that disproportionately impacts workers. It would be progressive – the less you own or earn, the less you pay – and a hell of a lot more fair than our current property tax system. So don’t buy the hype, people. As with our health care system, we are already doing it … we’re just doing it wrong.

luv u,

jp